IBM Launches Green Certification

ARMONK, N.Y. -- In an effort to help clients benchmark and improve the efficiency of their IT operations and reduce their environmental impact, IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) today announced the industry's first corporate-led initiative to enable clients to earn energy efficiency certificates for reducing the energy needed to run their data centers. The certificates earned -- based on energy use reduction verified by a third-party -- for the first time provide a way for businesses to attain a certified measurement of their energy use reduction, a key, emerging business metric. The certificates can be traded for cash on the growing energy efficiency certificate market or otherwise retained to demonstrate reductions in energy use and associated CO2 emissions.

The Efficiency Certificates initiative engages Neuwing Energy Ventures, a leading verifier of energy efficiency projects and marketer of energy efficiency certificates, to document and verify the energy savings a client achieves through implementing energy efficiency projects. Energy efficiency projects can be identified using IBM's data center evaluation offerings. An evaluation will result in recommendations clients can take, including implementing virtualization technologies to reduce the number of physical systems needed, and fixing data center design flaws, to reduce unnecessary power consumption.

"Increased energy efficiency allows companies to dramatically reduce costs and improve the overall efficiency of their IT operations while at the same time supporting a corporate responsibility agenda," said Rich Lechner, IBM's Vice President of IT Optimization. "A key ingredient for clients to effectively become more environmentally aware and efficient is measuring where they are. By collaborating with Neuwing Energy, an independent party, IBM clients can be assured that energy reduction results are documented and verified consistent with current and developing standards. Utilizing this process, clients can gain an understanding of the business and environmental value in reducing data center energy consumption."

IBM Corp.