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IBM's Energy Efficiency Certificate Program an Industry First

As part of its ongoing Project Big Green, IBM has created the industry's first company-led program to measure and certify energy efficiency results for data centers, and allow trading of efficiency certificates.

Late last week, IBM announced that it has created the industry's first company-led program to measure and certify energy efficiency results for data centers.

The company's Efficiency Certificates initiative, part of its ongoing Project Big Green environmental project, has been touted as a way to help companies save money and reduce the environmental impact of their IT operations. The certificate program will be created in partnership with Neuwing Energy Ventures, a company that certifies energy efficiency projects and markets the energy efficiency certificates that IBM will be using in its initiative.

Because data centers can consume 15 times the energy per square foot of a typical office building, the potential for economic and environmental benefits are impressive. IBM will use its data center evaluation services to measure benchmarks for energy efficiency, and will then offer its clients recommendations for ways to achieve efficiency goals.

Once a baseline for energy use is established and efficiency projects are put into place, Neuwing Energy will measure the reduction in total use and will issue the customers Efficiency Certificates to represent the savings. Companies will pay Neuwing for the assessment either through a portion of the value of the certificates or as a fee per megawatt-hour of electricity saved.

The certificates can then be traded on the market, which Neuwing Energy says has grown quickly and now covers millions of megawatt-hours, or the certificates can be used to show reductions in energy use and the associated CO2 emissions.

IBM said the Efficiency Certificates program will be available across its entire line of systems and storage programs starting in the U.S. in 2007, and will eventually expand to Europe in 2008.

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