New Green Grid study identifies “aggressive growth” of regulatory pressures on EMEA data centers

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Speaking about the volume of legislation and regulation coming into effect in EMEA, John Tuccillo, Chairman and President of the Green Grid spoke about a new report which the organization has recently launched for the EMEA data center community.

“Energy Policy Research & Implications For Data Centres In EMEA” highlights the impact of established policies, recent and planned developments affecting the build and operations of data centers at the international, regional and national level. The research provides the data center industry with advice on how data center operators can best adapt to rapidly changing policy environments.

Available from the Green Grid website, the report is free for Green Grid members, and is also available for non-members to purchase. “It builds upon a 2007 study by the Green Grid which set out to quantify whereabouts legislation and regulation was emerging that would have an impact upon the end user community for data centers,” John Tuccillo told me at Data Centres Europe 2012.

“The new report identifies a near 300% growth in the amount of legislation acting upon data centers, specific to EMEA… the aggressive growth in legislation is having a real and material affect upon data center owner/ operators throughout EMEA already,” he said. “It indicates that for sure the implications of owning and operating a data center are changing.”

The comprehensive report summarises the key energy policy mechanisms across 12 key EMEA countries – comprising the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – as well as EU and international policies.

The research focuses on four areas that affect data centers: government regulatory obligations (typically mandatory); relevant voluntary mechanisms; financial incentives for investing in the country and employing low carbon technology and practices; and the policies which add financial costs typically from an energy and carbon perspective.

The Green Grid report provides an overview of which measures are mandatory and which are voluntary, as well as an idea of whether there are fiduciary penalties or taxation implications contained within them.

As a data center owner/ operator “you’re going to quickly find yourself beyond the requirements of IT and facilities… and suddenly in [the] compliance zone. You’re going to find yourself having to quantify how the data center is meeting these legislative obligations… so the data center operator is going to say ‘I need to go work with my legal counsel,’” continued John Tuccillo.

It will be the Legal Department who take the operations data and submit it to the governing bodies: “We’re seeing it happen in the data center itself; we’re seeing it happen in new buildings that are going to be fixed use,” John Tuccillo said. “It depends upon the country.”

John Tuccillo concluded saying that this new study has proved such a valuable report to Europe’s data center community that the Green Grid has already been asked to commission a similar study in the United States in the near future, as well as one in Asia.

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  • Jim- just saw the IEC newsletter announcing your promotion to NFPA President. Congratulations!! You have worked hard for many years and this is the reward. Couldn’t be happier for you. I’m sure you’ll hear from Tim too.

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