EPA Extends Energy Star, DOE Releases DC Pro

This week there are several news items from the federal government agencies working with the data center sector on energy efficiency initiatives:

The Environmental Protection Agency has delayed the start of its National Data Center Energy Efficiency Program, an information-sharing initiative to develop an Energy Star certification for data center facilities. The one-year program had been scheduled to commence June 1, but the state has been pushed back to July 1 to allow additional participants to sign up. The EPA had hoped to have at least 100 data centers agree to share information on their energy usage, but as of late May just 54 data centers had signed up. Participants must collect 12 consecutive months of IT and building (whole building if stand-alone or data center portion only if within a larger building) energy use data, and submit the data by June 1, 2009. Additional details and instructions on how to participate are available at the Energy Star web site (PDF).

The Department of Energy has released the beta version of The Data Center Energy Profiler. The online tool, better known as DC Pro, allows users to complete a data center profile that can help identify potential energy savings. The survey takes about an hour to complete, and provides a customized, printable report that shows the details of energy purchases for your data center, how energy is consumed by your data center, potential cost and energy savings, comparison of your data center energy utilization versus other data centers, and a list of next steps. DC Pro was released June 2.