Do you know what “HR6, Section 453” is? (You should!)

January 2010

In 2007, the “Energy Independence and Security Act” was passed by congress and is sometimes referred to as “HR6” (see below). In this energy efficiency Act, Section 453 is a section dedicated to the application of this Act to the datacenter and the timeframes specified for doing so. In general, the Act requires mandatory compliance by the year 2011, unless the Secretary or Administrator of the program determines that the Act is not consistent with the industry’s current best energy practices and associated regulatory requirements in effect at that time. Now what is important here is that the Act appears to be in full effect today and has not been challenged nor deemed “Impractical” or technically infeasible. Assuming the likely scenario that the relevant government agencies continue to push for energy efficiency and independence, the HR6 Act will be applied to ALL companies within the US, public or private, and will define specific remedies (a.k.a. “fines”) associated with non-compliance. This will affect us all NEXT YEAR!

As a background, the Act considers any facility or portion of a facility that “primarily contains electronic equipment used to process, store, and transmit digital information” and which “uses environmental control equipment to maintain the proper conditions” to be a datacenter, dedicated or not. So, essentially any company with IT of any nature will be subject to compliance with “HR6-453” by 2011 (next year)! The good news is that the Act as written today, is focused on “Eco-Reporting” of all IT and facility assets alone, rather than the control and active reductions of energy consumption to any prescriptive level. It articulates that baselines must be drawn up that reflect “datacenter efficiency holistically, reflecting the total energy consumption” for IT equipment and the facilities around which they are housed. It requires that these baselines be documented, auditable and available for submission to the Administrator in 2011.

Towards this end, monitoring systems will be required to be identified and put in place THIS YEAR (2010) that have the ability to measure and view energy consumption for all IT related consumption, equipment, cooling, facilities, etc. These systems will have a unique opportunity today to be initially deployed for compliance with HR6 in 2011, and yet at the same time become the framework and basis for the next expected phase of mandated behavior which will deal with actually increasing the efficiency for the IT function across all companies in the US. Additionally and in support of this and subsequent Acts, the EPA is busy developing metrics in their Energy-Star programs which will set efficiency KPIs associated with IT equipment. In short order, guidelines (and later mandates) will exist that require the active monitoring and reporting, usage of increasingly efficient equipment, cooling and facilities infrastructure equipment, and the continuous optimization of the entire IT ‘system’ for increased energy efficiency much like ITIL has been suggesting for years. Given the roadmap ahead, now is the time to start planning for the inevitable.

Full Text of HR6 can be seen here. (Click through to GovTrack.us website.)