ISO Launches Standard for Energy Management

ISO has launched a project committee to develop an international standard for energy management following their successful examples of ISO 9000 and 14000 series.

ISO has just approved the creation of a project committee mandated to develop an international standard on energy management.

The standard will provide all types of organizations and companies a practical and widely recognized approach to increase energy efficiency, reduce costs and improve their environmental performance by addressing both the technical and management aspects of rational energy use. The standard is intended to be broadly applicable to various sectors of national economies, including utility, manufacturing, commercial building, general commerce, and transportation sectors, and therefore, could have influence on as much as 60 % of the world’s energy demand.

ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden commented: “The urgency to reduce GHG emissions, the reality of higher prices from reduced availability of fossil fuels, and the need to promote energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources, provide a strong rationale for developing this new standard building on the most advanced best practices and existing national or regional standards”.

Following the successful examples of the ISO 9000 series on quality management and the ISO 14000 series on environmental management, the project committee ISO/PC 242, Energy management, will consider the development of a standard containing relevant terms and definitions and providing management system requirements together with guidance for use, implementation, measurement and metrics.

The intent of the new ISO/PC 242 series are:

  • provide organizations and companies (utilities, manufacturers, commerce, buildings, transportation, both private and public) with a well-recognized framework for integrating energy efficiency into their management practices
  • offer organizations with operations in more than one country a single, harmonized standard for implementation across the organization
  • provide a logical and consistent methodology for identifying and implementing improvements that may contribute to a continual increase in energy efficiency across facilities
  • assist organizations to better utilize existing energy consuming assets, thus reducing costs and/or expanding capacity
  • offer guidance on benchmarking, measuring, documenting, and reporting energy intensity improvements and their projected impact on reductions in GHG emissions
  • create transparency and facilitate communication on the management of energy, promote energy management best practices, thus reinforcing the value of good energy management behaviours
  • assist facilities in evaluating and prioritizing the implementation of new energy-efficient technologies
  • provide a framework for organizations to encourage suppliers to better manage their energy, thus promoting energy efficiency throughout the supply chain
  • facilitate the use of energy management as a component of GHG emission reduction projects.

The secretariat of ISO/PC 242 will be held jointly by the ISO members for the United States and for Brazil: ANSI (American National Standardization Institute) and ABNT (Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas).

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Washington State Gov't uses Interpretation of Manufacturing Tax Law to Tax Data Centers

DataCenterKnowledge reports on the action by the Washington State Legislation to tax data center construction, removing a tax incentive all other gov'ts offer.

Legislation in Washington state that would have restored a tax break for data centers won't be passed in 2008, leaving Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) to mull the future of their plans to continue building in the state. Last month Microsoft and Yahoo halted construction on their multi-facility data center campuses in Quincy, Washington while state legislators debated the tax bill.

The tax package was drafted after the state ruled that data centers were no longer covered by a state sales tax break for manufacturing enterprises, and thus must pay a 7.9 percent tax on data center construction and equipment. Gov. Chris Gregoire requested an exemption in Senate Bill 6666, which would restore the exemption for data centers. The bill was caught up in tax politics, with media terming it a $1 billion tax break for high-tech giants.

The details of what is in the interpretation are:

In their Nov. 21 written response to Holmquist, McKenna and Assistant Attorney General Suzanne Shaw found that the state law establishing the tax break intends that "manufacturing does not include 'the production of computer software if the computer software is delivered from the seller to the purchaser by means other than tangible storage media, including the delivery by use of a tangible storage media where the tangible storage media is not physically transferred to the purchaser.' As we understand it, with respect to data accessed and manipulated by the Internet companies' customers under the circumstances about which you inquire, there neither is a sale nor transfer of electronic data through a tangible storage medium."

So, if there was an energy consuming wasteful retail software facility, the companies would get the tax break.  But, given they use the Internet to deliver software, no tax break. How wasteful is that?

Ultimately, this is all about Washington State going after tax revenue in a year when they are going to have shortfalls, and long term they are going to drive data centers to other states.

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Political Jockeying around Colorado River Water, $30 - 35 million dollar event

Water is a critical resource, and allocation is a political battle for its use.  This problem has been occuring in the Southeast as well as the Southwest. The NYtimes writes about a 60-hour release of water to improve the fish environment in the Grand Canyon with an electricity cost of $30 - 35 million dollars to replace.

Torrent in Colorado River Is Unleashed to Aid Fish

Matt York/Associated Press

At the Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Ariz., water jetted into the Colorado River on Wednesday to benefit fish in the Grand Canyon.

The 60-hour release, being presided over by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, was the latest chapter in a long-running tug of war between the department’s Bureau of Reclamation, which controls the two major Colorado River dams, and the National Park Service over how to balance the Southwest’s need for hydroelectric power against the needs of an endangered fish, the humpbacked chub, for water flows that mimic the natural rhythms of the river.

The water poured out of the dam as if pumped through a gigantic fire hose, at the rate of 41,500 cubic feet per second — enough to fill the Empire State Building in 20 minutes. This release, which engineers call “high flow,” was meant to scour the river bottom and deposit silt and sediment to rebuild and extend sandbars and create new, calm backwater areas where the fish can spawn.

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Iowa Gov. wants more Renewable Energy and Reduce Energy Consumption, exempts Google's Council Bluffs Data Center

MSNBC has an article about renewable energy and reducing consumption.

DES MOINES, Iowa - Gov. Chet Culver called Monday for producing more renewable energy and reducing energy use by 5 percent.

"The good news here is we have a lot of support, both public and private support," said Culver, speaking during a telephone conference call from Washington, D.C., where he was attending a National Governors Association meeting.

Much of the conference is devoted to energy issues, and Culver said it was a good opportunity to focus on the topic, which has been a centerpiece of his first term as governor. He and legislators already have agreed on a $100 million fund that will finance alternative energy projects in the state.

And conveniently dances around the energy needs of Google's Council Bluffs data center project.

Allowing utility regulators to set a statewide goal of reducing energy use by 1.5 percent a year, and eventually trimming the use by 5 percent. Some economic development projects, such as a Google Inc. data center under construction near Council Bluffs, will require additional energy, but Culver said he's focused on reducing base demand.

So in the end are the Iowa citizens subsidizing the increased power use by Google's data center? And, the governor is able to claim energy savings while bottom line he transferred the energy consumption to Google.

How much power will Google's Iowa data center consume?  According to permits it could be 76 mW in its 1st phase.

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Microsoft & Yahoo Join Effort to Keep Sales Tax Exemption for Washington Data Centers

KomoTV.com covers the interesting situation where Microsoft and Yahoo are together in asking for Sales Tax Exemption for Data Centers in Eastern Washington.

"States such as Iowa and others have come on board with very attractive tax incentive packages to get data centers to locate in their communities," DeLee Shoemaker, Microsoft's state government affairs director, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Washington state is no longer competitive for this type of business."

In response, Gov. Chris Gregoire requested an exemption which would eliminate half the state sales tax on replacement equipment for the mammoth server farms. The exemption wouldn't affect this year's state budget, but would cost about $32 million in the next two-year period and $43 million in the 2011 to 2013 period.

Microsoft has lobbied for a 100 percent sales tax exemption.

Critics said Eastern Washington's low-cost land and clean power sources already make it an attractive location for data centers, without a tax break.

I just got back from a trip to Columbia Basin (home of the new data center construction). The critics have no idea how competitive the data center site selection is, and how this sends a message to data center operators that the state of Washington is out to tax data centers.

The State hit Yahoo with the 7.9 state sales tax right after Yahoo opened their new data center.

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