One of the centerpieces of President elect Obama's energy plan is a cap-and-trade program designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050. That means that enterprise may eventually have a cap put on the amount of greenhouse gases they emit, and would have to pay if they wanted to exceed those emissions. Would that mean you'll have to pay what amounts to a carbon tax for an inefficient data center?

The blog Data Center Knowlege has an intriguing post looking at this very issue. It quotes Christian Belady, Principal Power & Cooling Architect for Microsoft saying that companies should immediately start tracking their power and carbon use immediately, for the time when the plan goes into effect. He warns:

Many companies are still not measuring as they should and will have to invest heavily to ramp up these competencies to meet government requirements.

The truth is, though, if you start greening your data center now, you likely won't run into any problems. And overall, more efficient hardware --- notably servers --- will also hold down your energy bill and carbon footprint.

Jack Pouchet, director of energy efficiency at Emerson Network Power is quoted as saying:

We expect to see a greater push by the US EPA on ENERGY STAR for servers that will drive standby and idle energy demands down significantly. This may very well have the single greatest potential for energy savings within the data center industry as today’s idle energy consumption still averages well over 60 percent of full-power.

So the odds are that if you start greening your data center today, you'll likely never face the prospect of what amounts to a carbon tax by having to buy the right to exceed your emission caps.