'Decoupling' is the top buzzword du premier jour à Data Centres Europe 2011 conference: it's not yet déjeuner time, and it's cropped up at least half a dozen times in the morning's leading presentations and plenary sessions.

In his impressive early morning keynote Aaron Davis, chief marketing officer at Schneider Electric, told delegates that the biggest challenge facing the data centre industry is perhaps the need to break the link between its role in underpinning national economies, from the fact that this imperative is shackling its ability to control its own costs and its reputation for effective carbon management.

The global data centres sector famously consumes as much energy as the airlines business; but whereas people understand why airlines are culpable because they travel and/or see airplanes roaring overhead, most purchasers on online products and services have no clue as to the massive amounts of power-ravenous IT that enable the e-economy to thrive.

The extant data centres industry model allies economic growth with energy consumption, Davis points out; the snag is that because consumers are at several removes from the vendors of the actual Internet products and services that they consume - data centres are not able to scale up their prices in line with their escalating costs. The result: more and more financial costs and legislative pressures on data centres that cannot be passed on to end-users.

Because this model cannot now be reversed, to survive "the data centre industry has to decouple economic growth from issues of energy consumption," Davis believes: "And the data centre industry is the only body that can do this". Not only can do, but must do, Davis adds, because if it has only a five-to fifteen year window to reduce consumption in a self-regulated way before governments will be forced into greater legislation to mitigate the effects of global warming, and find ways to tax for 10 per cent of GDP that will be required to fund building seawalls on an industrial scale.

Davis called for greater investment in a new generation of data centre professionals qualified in energy efficiency skills to and beyond degree level.

Edited: 28 June 2012 at 04:43 PM by Buzzsore Moderator