EPA Wants Greener Servers, Data Centers

This week seems to be "Green Week" for government. First, the United Kingdom announced this week that it was forming a task force to look into how it can reduce the energy consumption (and therefore the production of greenhouse gases) of PCs, data centers and other computer-related processes that eat up energy.

Now the Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce soon that it is extending its Energy Star program for desktop PCs to servers, reports the EETimes. According to the article:

The EPA may announce the effort as part of a report on the problem of rising power consumption in large data centers. The report, due out in about two weeks, will also recommend metrics for measuring power efficiency in data centers and suggest government and commercial data centers begin using them.

... The EPA report will ask government data centers to start measuring and reporting their power efficiency. It will also ask the government data centers to develop a road map for improving their efficiency over time to act as examples for commercial data centers.

EPA launched the Energy Star program in 1992 to recognize computers and monitors that were energy efficient. EPA has expanded the program to include major appliances, office equipment, home electronics, and new homes and office buildings.