UL Environment to Develop New Sustainability Standards for Modular Data Centers

NORTHBROOK, Ill., Oct. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- UL Environment, Inc., a global leader in environmental evaluation and certification, today announced a collaborative effort to develop sustainability standards for modular data centers based on environmental assessment of the product's entire life cycle. The initial standard establishes environmental and sustainability requirements for modular data centers and their components including servers, racks, interconnect, cooling and power subsystems. This follows the organization's announcement of a standards development effort for mobile phones and continues UL Environment's focus on developing sustainability standards for the high-tech industry.

"Companies are increasingly looking to lower the energy use of their data centers," said Stephen Wenc, president of UL Environment. "This sustainability standard will incorporate energy efficiency but also take into account a data center's manufacture, use and disposal. We are leading a collaborative standards effort that will support the development of more environmentally friendly options and help companies utilize data centers as opportunities to operate more sustainably."

Development of the standards will draw upon input from a UL Environment Standard Technical Panel (STP), comprised of stakeholders such as manufacturers, government entities, product engineers and designers and consumer interest group.

UL Environment expects the sustainability standards to be completed in 2011. For more information, visit www.ulenvironment.com.

About UL Environment, Inc.

UL Environment (ULE) is a full-service environmental solutions company. UL Environment is helping support the growth and development of sustainable products, services and companies in the global marketplace through standards development, independent third-party assessment and certification and knowledge services. UL Environment is a wholly owned subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories, a global leader in conformity assessment that has been testing products and writing standards for more than a century. UL Environment currently offers Environmental Claims Validation (ECV), a service testing and verifying manufacturers' self-declared environmental claims and Sustainable Products Certification (SPC), a service evaluating and certifying products to accepted industry standards for environmental sustainability and Energy Efficiency Certification (EEC), a service testing and verifying product compliance with mandatory and voluntary energy efficiency regulations and programs. UL Environment is developing additional environmental standards, as well as training and advisory services to support organizations in the sustainable products and services industry. More information is available at www.ulenvironment.com.

SOURCE UL Environment, Inc.