by Brianna Crandall — October 15, 2010—UL Environment, global provider of environmental evaluation and certification, announced on October 6 a collaborative effort to develop sustainability standards for modular data centers based on environmental assessment of the product’s entire life cycle.
The initial standard establishes environmental and sustainability requirements for modular data centers and their components including servers, racks, interconnect, cooling and power subsystems. This follows the organization’s announcement of a standards development effort for mobile phones and continues UL Environment’s focus on developing sustainability standards for the high-tech industry.
“Companies are increasingly looking to lower the energy use of their data centers,” said Stephen Wenc, president of UL Environment. “This sustainability standard will incorporate energy efficiency but also take into account a data center’s manufacture, use and disposal. We are leading a collaborative standards effort that will support the development of more environmentally friendly options and help companies utilize data centers as opportunities to operate more sustainably.”
Development of the standards will draw upon input from a UL Environment Standard Technical Panel comprised of stakeholders such as manufacturers, government entities, product engineers and designers, and consumer interest groups. UL Environment expects the sustainability standards to be completed in 2011.
