In this week's News Roundup I covered the news of Wikimedia Foundation selecting EvoSwitch, a Dutch data center operator, for its European hub operations. The contract is worth nearly half a million dollars a year. EvoSwitch is a carbon-neutral data center operator, and was recognized recently by the German government as one of 11 environmentally friendly data centers. The green factor was apparently one of the reasons EvoSwitch was selected.

Green data centers are very much the focus of the Dutch Hosting Providers Association industry group. Last week, the 19 members of DHPA drafted a set of regulations to regulate green data centers and power usage. The regulations address cooling, virtualization, tax policy and flex time for workers.

I think the Dutch may be on to something. Industry-led regulation and standards is nearly almost always a better option that government mandate. We see this time and time again in the United States, from voluntary ratings for video games and music to auto safety standards. The DHPA appears to have an ambitious agenda (based on a rough Google translation) ranging from collecting information about its members, developing a common customer rating standard, and developing a standard Service Level Agreement. Some of these activities would raise an antitrust eyebrow in the United States, but there's certainly no legal impediment to an industry group developing a common standard for regulating and branding green data centers. We'll see if the Dutch standard takes off, and whether its impact will spread beyond Dutch borders.