DOE and Uptime Institute Recognize Leaders in Data Center Energy Efficiency

April 16, 2009

DOE and the Uptime Institute yesterday recognized technology companies, leading insurance agencies, universities, and individual corporations for their steps toward improved energy efficiency in data centers. A total of seven awards were presented during a ceremony at the Uptime Institute's 4th Annual Research Symposium: LEAN, CLEAN, and GREEN. DOE Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency John Lushetsky presented the awards along with Kenneth Brill, Executive Director of the Uptime Institute.

The Uptime Institute is a think-tank and advisory group to owners and operators of the world's largest enterprise data centers. The Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Awards were founded by the Uptime Institute in 2008 to honor organizations that have distinguished themselves by reducing energy consumption in their data centers and beyond.

DOE worked with the Institute to create the Save Energy Now Data Center Award category within the Green Enterprise IT Awards. These awards are specifically for data center facility and joint facility/IT energy use improvements. The winners were chosen based on the extent to which the improvements made an original contribution to IT or data center efficiency, how easily the reported lessons learned could be replicated in other businesses, the ambitiousness of the project, and the impact on the organization converted into dollars and/or carbon footprint reduction.

The award winner for Data Center Energy Efficiency Improvement in a Joint IT and Facilities application is the MassMutual Financial Group. The award winner for Data Center Energy Efficiency Improvement in a single facility is UniCredit Group. For a full list of award winners, please visit the Uptime Institute Web site.

Data center energy use in the public and private sectors is growing at a 12% annual rate and currently accounts for 1.5% of U.S. electricity use. DOE's Industrial Technologies Program recently released DC Pro, an online software tool designed to help industries worldwide quickly "diagnose" how energy is being used by their data centers and how they might save energy and money. Building on the Save Energy Now energy assessment model, DOE can help companies benchmark data center energy use and identify opportunities to reduce energy by 25% or more. DOE will work with data center technology providers and equipment suppliers, end users, and DOE's National Laboratories to explore joint industry R&D opportunities.