BlueFire CTO Scott Atkinson participated in a recent APC Roundtable discussing “power pressures and the datacentre”. The 12 attendees chewed over developments in datacentre design with an eye on existing policy and strategic thinking.

It is certainly a hot topic given the reality of rapidly escalating electricity prices and a carbon tax on the horizon. To combat this impost, hosting providers are going to be under pressure to shift offshore, especially if a carbon tax is not universally applied around the globe. Now while this may fly for small business it certainly won’t for Government and the likes of financial institutions because it raises serious concerns over data sovereignty.

As for BlueFire, there are no plans to move off shore and we remain solely focused on providing services to our clients today rather than worry today how a carbon tax may play out in a year or two. Scott Atkinson commented “I just see that until somebody gets billed for $10,000 a month for non-greenness, nothing is going to happen.”

Strangely, for many, there is less concern about being green and more concern about saving money. Some attendees even reported that Request for Tender documents are increasingly unconcerned about green requirements at all - which is surprising given the rising cost of power.

One thing is clear, the need for high-efficiency, high-density datacentres will eventually force many organisations to address the challenges of spiralling energy costs and datacentre power consumption.