Are you a Data Center professional who doubts that Carbon legislation is going to happen or that this initiative will never get off the ground? This afternoon President Obama plans to outline his intention to assess a cost for Carbon consumption at a conference highlighting his economic accomplishments to date. The backdrop of this of course is the massive oil rig disaster in the Gulf.
As my talk at the Uptime Institute Symposium highlighted this type of legislation will have a big impact on data center and mission critical professionals. Whether you know it or not, you will be front and center in assisting with the response, collection and reporting required to react to this kind of potential legislation. In my talk where I questioned the audience in attendance it was quite clear that most of those in the room were vastly ill-prepared and ill-equipped to this kind of effort.
If passed this type of legislation is going to cause a severe reaction inside organizations to ensure that they are in compliance and likely lead to a huge increase of spending in an effort to collect energy information along with reporting. For many organizations this will result in significant spending.
The US House of Representatives has already passed a version of this known as the Waxman Markey bill. You can bet that there will be a huge amount of pressure to get a Senate version passed and out the door in the coming weeks and months.
This should be a clarion call for data center managers to step up and raise awareness within their organizations about this pending legislation and take a proactive role in establishing a plan for a corporate response. Take an inventory of your infrastructure and assess what will you need to begin collecting this information? It might even be wise to get a few quotes to get an idea or ballpark cost of what it might take to bring your organization up to the task. Its probably better to start doing this now, than to be told by the business to get it done.
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