Digital Realty Trust, a data center provider, recently surveyed data center operators on green initiatives within their organizations. The survey found that a lack of industry standards is slowing green data center initiatives. 

Of the companies surveyed, 51% have green strategies, compared with 55% in 2007. Eighty two percent of the respondents indicated that there are no clear industry standards for building green data centers. While 94%, a number that has increased since 2007, said there should be a standard on how to achieve efficient power use. Eighty three percent said a standard is needed to outline how to enhance heating and air-conditioning systems to use energy more efficiently.

With an absence of green standards for the data center, 60% of the companies are looking to LEED certification for general building standards. The work of the Green Grid was also cited as a resource for green initiatives.

Of the 51% of companies with green strategies, 82% are taking an approach that looks at servers, other data center hardware, as well as facility design and data center operations.

Only 18% plan to include carbon credits in their green data center plans and instead focus on directly reducing their data center energy consumption.

The respondents to the survey were IT decision-makers at large corporations in North America with a revenue of at least $1 billion or a size of at least 5000+ employees.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW and host of both the Masters of Storage and Masters of Servers Solution Centers.