Reducing data center energy waste? We're on it

Published September 28, 2012 in Climate

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This week The New York Times began publishing an excellent series of articles examining the high energy demands of data centers -- those rarely-thought-of places that store all the precious information contained on our phones, tablets, and computers.

Not only do these facilities use enormous amounts of energy, a lot of it is wasted, the series points out.

Part of the problem is the enormous cooling costs associated with keeping servers from overheating as they process immense amounts of information.

And where there's a problem, there's an opportunity, notes David Fox, EDF's energy efficiency coordinator. 

"The challenge becomes cooling thousands or millions of square feet of indoor space which contains equipment that is constantly producing heat," Fox said. "The owners or operators of the physical building containing the data center can save money and energy through improving the efficiency of the cooling system and the building itself."

Through our Climate Corps program, which embeds energy efficiency fellows at companies and organizations, we've been working with a major data center company, QTS, since 2011 to make just these sort of changes, plus many other energy efficiency measures.

See our 2011 results helping QTS contain energy waste, and what we're doing this year.