Sun Microsystems on Friday said it spearheaded a meeting with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and others to create a standard energy-efficiency metric for servers, furthering the focus Sun has placed on energy efficiency since the introduction of its most recent line of servers.

Advanced Micro Devices, a supplier of chips for some Sun servers, and the Lawrence Berkeley Lab also attended the meeting, but there was no mention of participation by Sun competitors.

The group hopes to define a common measurement that server makers can use to indicate the energy efficiency of their servers, allowing customers to compare and choose products based on the common measurement, Sun said. The group hopes to complete and introduce the metric in mid-2006.

When Sun introduced its T2000 servers based on its UltraSparc T1 processors late last year, the company highlighted the low energy consumption of the products. At the time, Jonathan Schwartz, president and chief operating officer at Sun, hinted at his desire to build a program much like the one announced today. He compared the potential effort to Energy Star in the United States, a government-backed program that awards energy-efficient models of products including PCs and monitors with the Energy Star logo, sometimes offering special rebates to consumers who buy the products.

Environmental agencies in Europe are also interested in promoting server energy efficiency, the EPA said, although such agencies don’t appear to have been involved in these discussions.

The EPA is a U.S. government body with the mission of protecting the environment. The Lawrence Berkeley Lab is part of the University of California and is a U.S. Department of Energy National Lab.

-Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service

For related news coverage, read Sun Launches New Thin Clients, Ships Niagara Server.

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