Patent ID: 7742830

Claim:
A method of operating one or more computing data center facilities, the method comprising: a controller of a computer system determining an emission usage value indicative of an estimated amount of greenhouse gas emission caused by consumption of power by one or more resources within the one or more computing data center facilities, wherein the one or more resources include computing resources and data center infrastructure resources; wherein determining the emission usage value includes the controller automatically using a number of available green credits to reduce the estimated amount of greenhouse gas emission, wherein a green credit corresponds to a predetermined amount of power generated using a renewable energy source; the controller comparing an allocated emission value of the one or more computing data center facilities to the emission usage value, wherein the allocated emission value corresponds to an amount of greenhouse gas emissions allocated to the one or more computing data center facilities by a governing body and is specified as a number of emission units, wherein each emission unit represents a predetermined amount of greenhouse gas emissions; and the controller providing a signal to control an operation of at least one of the one or more resources in at least one of the one or more computing data center facilities in response to the comparison between the emission usage value and the allocated emission value reaching a predetermined threshold value.