Calls for a national "cap and trade" system for containing the carbon footprint of U.S. businesses have a lot of public and private policy makers concerned. Where are these proposals coming from? Well, a relatively new player is known as USCAP, the United States Climate Action Partnership. This combination of companies and civic climate and environmental groups is getting the ear of the nation these days, arguing that a cap and trade system is just what the country needs to move toward fixing our energy use issues.
The group's recent "Blueprint for Legislative Action" includes the following statement: "We believe the strongest way to achieve our emission reduction goals is a federal cap-and-trade program coupled with cost containment measures and complementary policies for technology research, development and deployment, clean coal technology deployment, lower-carbon transportation technologies and systems, and improved energy efficiency in buildings, industry and appliances."
Will this include greener computing and IT? Will it encourage businesses to invest in better cooling systems for data centers, more efficient workstations, or devices with more auto-shutoff features? Maybe, according to the size of the business, but to some who follow the energy game, these kinds of changes are background.
Many who are responding to the USCAP proposal in the public arena are putting issues like clean coal technology center-stage. The Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog puts the focus on the need for incentives that will get the nation's energy providers to invest in clean-coal, due to the large role of current coal power in today's grid. Nuclear power production is another focal point. (The blog seems to suggest that the cap-and-trade proposal will not be sufficient as a catalyst for these kinds of innovations). In general, some of the pundits looking into their crystal balls view the transformations of even mid-size to large businesses as small potatoes in a vastly larger energy game.
Other voices tell a different story. A survey of the thoughts of several IT leaders by InfoWorld's Ted Samson reveals opinions that show some of the likely changes to come out of a cap and trade system, including energy efficiency for all of a company's hardware, especially high-end database server setups and other energy-hogging installations. Businesses who may not be into the logic of greening a business, say some of these respondents, may be swept along by the new regulations out of Washington, as well as the influence of a similar system in the UK.
And focusing on the 'major' aspects in which businesses can work toward compliance with a cap and trade system suggests that the variety of IT and hardware choices now being pioneered will become more and more part of the mainstream, although the defined shape of any such system is still dinstinctly in the future.