WITH SUSTAINABILITY NOW A BOARDROOM METRIC, CIOS ARE EXPECTED TO RECONCILE GROWTH WITH COST-EFFICIENCY AND LEAD FROM THE INFRASTRUCTURE UP – YET, ENERGY ITSELF CAN OFTEN BE THE MOST OVERLOOKED ASSET IN THEIR STRATEGY.
E X P E R T O P I N I O N here is mounting
T pressure on organisations across the UK and Europe to deliver against green targets and reduce their energy footprint, all while driving growth. This is no mean feat. According to PwC, although close to half of UK organisations have now committed to net zero by 2030( a positive change, up from 28 % in 2024), the majority( 83 %) expect their energy consumption to increase this year – with the impact of high energy costs seen as a key barrier impeding their ability to compete internationally.
Some sectors, such as data centres, are facing added pressure to comply with sustainability targets. The European
Union ' s Energy Efficiency Directive( EED) mandates that data centres over 500kW now report key energy efficiency metrics – demanding transparency and efficiency on a scale never seen before.
With sustainability now a boardroom metric, CIOs are expected to reconcile growth with cost-efficiency and lead from the infrastructure up – yet, energy itself can often be the most overlooked asset in their strategy. To cut back on energy wastage and improve sustainability, CIOs patterns. Intelligent energy monitoring tools today can provide granular insight into key energy performance indicators such as the Power Usage Effectiveness( PUE) of data centre operations – enabling CIOs to make informed decisions to boost the efficiency of their infrastructures.
The rise of modular power solutions
Accuracy and agility are key operative words in the context of energy management – however, many
“
WITH SUSTAINABILITY NOW A BOARDROOM METRIC, CIOS ARE EXPECTED TO RECONCILE GROWTH WITH COST-EFFICIENCY AND LEAD FROM THE INFRASTRUCTURE UP – YET, ENERGY ITSELF CAN OFTEN BE THE MOST OVERLOOKED ASSET IN THEIR STRATEGY.
must treat power management as an integral part of their IT strategy.
Getting smarter about energy monitoring and management
When it comes to reducing energy costs, one of the biggest challenges is understanding where exactly energy is being consumed and consequently how to avoid wastage. CIOs can only improve what they measure, and they can only manage what they can see. But energy management is still a blind spot for many organisations, with usage data often fragmented across departments or wholly unavailable.
Gaining full visibility into energy consumption across the IT infrastructure can help CIOs identify baselines, detect irregularities, and track energy performance across all parts of the organisation. With the right insights, they can pinpoint which systems draw the most power during peak times and locate inefficient equipment or operating organisations still rely on monolithic infrastructures that are difficult to operationalise and scale.
To future-proof operations, organisations are increasingly adopting modular solutions, which can be fully customised to adapt to fast-changing IT environments. Crucially, modern energy management systems can guarantee high accuracy along the entire power and energy measurement chain, not just on the level of individual power monitoring devices, current and voltage transformers and cables. Industry best practice now sets the benchmark at 0.5 % system accuracy, meaning that the total measurement error across the entire chain does not exceed 0.5 % of the actual value.
Modular architectures enable organisations to combine power monitoring, power quality and residual current monitoring under one interoperable ecosystem – reducing footprint while maximising reliability and scalability.
www. intelligentdatacentres. com 43