EPA Recruits Energy Star Participants

July 2, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Environmental watchdog group, the US Environmental Protection Agency (epa.gov) announced last week that at least 215 data centers have volunteered to supply data on their energy usage in its effort to develop an Energy Star (energystar.gov) certification for data center facilities.

The announcement was made at Andrew Fanara of the EPA’s Energy Star program at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Data Center Energy Summit in Santa Clara, California.

The 215 faciltiies that have agreed to participate in the study is a significant improvement from mid-May, when a mere 54 facilities offered their data, falling short of the group’s goal of 100.

The EPA prolonged its original deadline of June 1 by a month in hopes of recruiting more data centers. This week, the organization will finally get started on the project with more than double the number of facilities it originally anticipated.

Using the information of data centers of at least 1,000 square feet, the EPA is working towards developing the Energy Star Data Center Infrastructure Rating. The standard will help data center operators and their customers evaluate the energy efficiency of specific facilities.

Participants must hand over the energy use data of 12 consecutive months of IT and building, which includes records for the whole building if it is a stand-alone or data center portion only if it is located within a larger building. energy use data, and submit the data by June 1, 2009.

Further details and instructions on how data centers can participate can be viewed here at the Energy Star website.

Tags: data center, Environmental Protection Agency