According to media reports and information received by RenewIT partners, European authorities appear to be considering some kind of regulation of datacenter energy use and carbon emissions in the near future.

Details are still scant on what form the rules might take but the European Commission held a workshop to look at the issue in April 2014. The results of that meeting are expected to inform the decision to introduce new rules.

If new rules are introduced, it could help encourage data centres to make more use of renewable sources of energy and cooling. However the UK government recently back-tracked on its CRC Energy Efficiency de-facto carbon tax and opted to introduce a Climate Change Agreement for data centres which replaces taxation with energy efficiency targets.

The RenewIT project is developing a range of technologies to make it easier for data centre operators to select the right renewable energy sources and cooling.