Europe’s mission on emissions

With the situation with green regulations seen as confusing, Harry Forbes asks what is happening in Europe and how this is impacting on data centres.

“The crosstalk performance allows noise cancellers to be turned down creating potential energy savings of up to 35 percent compared with Cat 6A”
-Harry Forbes

The UK is leading the world in introducing its Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) whilst the rest of Europe is, for now, on a voluntary code. The US is also fast moving towards legislation to control carbon emissions. This month the UK introduces the first mandatory carbon emissions trading scheme. Around 20,000 companies will be affected by the scheme which targets the heaviest energy users - those consuming more than 6000 Mega-Watt Hours (mwh) per year. The CRC scheme will act as a cap and trade scheme where participants buy or sell allowances through an emissions trading scheme. Participating companies will face penalties or bonuses depending on their CO2 consumption.

The current situation on recording and reducing carbon emissions in Europe is voluntary. However, the EU has introduced a voluntary code specifically with data centres in mind. But why are data centres a focus when it comes to CO2 emissions? Because worldwide they are expected by 2020 to consume around 450 billion kWh and 300 million tonnes of CO2 emissions - equal to those of Portugal, Switzerland, Greece and Sweden combined! The EU Code of Conduct on Data Centres is a set of practical guidelines to improve energy efficiency within the data centre industry. The code aims to inform and stimulate data centre operators and owners to reduce energy consumption in a cost-effective manner without hampering the mission critical function of data centres.

There are already many ways of identifying, reducing or better using energy consumption in data centres and the choice of cabling has a significant role to play in this. Previously data centres had a life span of 10-15 years but now they are expected to run from 20-50 years so the choices made in fixed infrastructure have long-term repercussions. Not only must LAN cabling be able to support several generations of bandwidth evolution, but it must also facilitate best practice in energy conservation. Cabling can make a positive contribution to reduced energy consumption in a number of areas. For instance, new advancements of Energy Efficient Ethernet will be able to power down equipment such as servers and switches when in idle mode. Also, the use of higher performance cabling such as Cat 7A not only provides flexibility to support higher bandwidth but the additional headroom allows switch power to be reduced by up to 40 percent when transmitting data over shorter runs.

In addition, the crosstalk performance allows noise cancellers to be turned down creating potential energy savings of up to 35 percent compared with Cat 6A. Cat 7A also provides opportunities to further reduce energy use through improved Digital Signal Processing (DSP) designs. The combined benefits can provide a swift payback on the small initial extra investment in the cabling. An Environmental Monitoring and Access Control (EMAC) tool is also vital in identifying and controlling energy use. The tool allows the user to optimise power consumption and energy use. PDUs distribute power to individual sockets and can automatically switch them on or off depending on the electrical need. They have intelligent connections to rack manager which provides time/date stamped monitoring of volts, amps and sockets used as well as sending email alerts in the event that preset parameters are exceeded. Taking a closer look at cabling is vital if countries outside the UK and US want to avoid government intervention. Self-regulation, however, will only remain if organisations take action to reduce the energy consumption in data centres now.

Harry Forbes is Chief Technology Officer at Nexans Cabling Solutions and was educated in electrical and electronic engineering. He has worked in the cabling and networking industries for the past 30 years in various technical roles, and has extensive knowledge of and expertise in enterprise systems and data centre infrastructure requirements.