Data centers in the United States consume more than 60 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually at a cost of about $4.5 billion per year; more than double data center electricity consumption in 2000, and more than the electricity consumption of 11 different states. At these current trends, national data center energy consumption will nearly double again by 2011. Therefore, the Alliance Data Center Program–founded in 2006–encourages energy-efficiency improvements in data centers through various initiatives.
Last year the program hosted a series of discussions on data center energy use in federal facilities, issued a report on data centers titled “Data Center Energy Use: A New Energy Policy Frontier,” and contributed to the EPA-led Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency, Public Law 109-431. The program has commented on and continues to work with various public and private sector efforts to establish data center efficiency standards and metrics, and is working to raise awareness in Congress of data center energy use and opportunities to improve efficiency.
For more information, contact Steve Capanna (scapanna@ase.org) or Joe Loper (jloper@ase.org).
Updated: August 19, 2008
