WASHINGTON – The Green Grid (TGG) announced it will partner with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on a new survey of data center energy and water use to allow for an update to the U.S. EPA’s 1-100 Energy Star score for data centers. This partnership between TGG and EPA is an important step in enabling the data center industry to continue its drive toward resource and energy efficiency improvements in its facilities and critical to the world’s fight against climate change.
As an affiliate of the global tech association Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), TGG works globally to create tools, provide technical expertise, and advocate for the optimization of energy and resource efficiency of data center ecosystems in order to enable a low carbon economy.
"For more than a decade, The Green Grid has proudly collaborated with the U.S. EPA on its data center-related Energy Star programs and is excited to partner on this effort to facilitate an update to the Energy Star score to take into account recent modernization of data centers," said Erica Thomas, ITI’s senior director for The Green Grid. "As the world’s demand for data centers continues to grow rapidly, access to the best data center performance information is an important element to enable industry innovation."
"We’re looking forward to collaborating with The Green Grid on this important effort to better understand the current state of data center energy efficiency and are excited about the opportunity to update the Energy Star score and provide critical feedback to data center owners and operators on their energy performance," said Michael Zatz, manager of EPA's Energy Star Commercial Buildings program. "TGG has been a long-time partner to the EPA, and we appreciate their contribution to this critical project."
The 1-100 Energy Star score allows any data center in the U.S. to assess its energy performance relative to its peers. Properties that receive a score of 75 or higher are eligible for Energy Star certification, which is an industry symbol for superior energy performance. Having an updated Energy Star score will encourage data center operators to improve performance and achieve higher levels of energy efficiency to support the nation’s critical digital infrastructure.
EPA’s process for developing the Energy Star score requires analysis of a dataset from a representative sample of U.S. buildings. TGG will be creating and administering a voluntary survey available to all U.S. data centers and will deliver the anonymized results to the EPA to facilitate development of an updated Energy Star score. The survey will include stand-alone data center facilities as well as those enclosed within larger buildings. In addition to collecting energy consumption data, TGG will analyze and identify specific operating factors likely to influence energy consumption and develop a list of operating characteristics to be surveyed.
ITI’s TGG works to improve IT and data center energy efficiency and eco-design around the world. It is an open industry consortium of information and communications technology (ICT) end users, policymakers, technology providers, facility architects, and utility companies. It offers data center expertise that governments turn to for industry insight and counsel, bringing to bear the combined influence of a diverse body of ICT industry leaders. For more information, visit www.thegreengrid.org.
