CoreSite, Digital Realty Join Obama’s Better Buildings Challenge

CoreSite Realty and Digital Realty Trust have joined the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Challenge, a major component of President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan, whose goals include reducing data center energy consumption.

By joining the program, the two data center providers (both among the largest wholesale players in the U.S.), have committed to reduce their data center energy use by at least 20 percent over the next 10 years. They joined the program along with 17 other companies and government organizations who pledged to achieve the same data center energy use reductions.

The other companies that joined were eBay, Schneider Electric, Home Depot and Staples. Government agencies that joined were numerous DoE national labs, federal agencies and Michigan State University.

Together, the new participants operate data centers that draw more than 90 megawatts of power, according to the DoE.

The department estimated that if all data centers in the U.S. became 20 percent more energy efficient, the country’s energy consumption as a whole would go down by more than 20 billion kWh by 2020, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in a statement. “As the Better Buildings Challenge expands, leading organizations are partnering with the Department to apply energy efficiency measures and energy management strategies that will shape the nation’s next-generation of data centers,” he said.

About 200 organizations have joined the Better Buildings Challenge so far. According to the DoE, they have already completed upgrades to more than 9,000 facilities.

The DoE expects CoreSite, Digital Realty and others to report results of their energy efficiency improvements in the first year.

Here is the full list of government agencies that have recently joined the challenge:

The DoE has a similar challenge program just for federal agencies. The government’s Data Center Energy Challenge is organized by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Government Information Technology Executive Council.