42 U.S.C. § 17112 — Energy efficiency for data center buildings

(a) Definitions: This section defines two terms. A "data center" is a facility that mainly holds electronic equipment used to process, store, and transmit digital information. It can be its own free-standing building, or it can be a space inside a larger building, as long as it uses environmental controls to keep conditions right for that electronic equipment. A "data center operator" is any person or government entity that builds or runs a data center, or that buys data center services, equipment, or facilities. (b) Voluntary national information program: Within 90 days of December 19, 2007, the Secretary of Energy and the EPA Administrator, after talking with the information technology industry and other interested parties, had to start a voluntary national information program. It covers the kinds of data centers and data center equipment that are widely used and where there's real potential for energy savings. The program must look at data center efficiency as a whole system — both the equipment and the building — not piece by piece, and must build on prior EPA and DOE work. It must decide exactly which types of data centers and equipment the program covers, and must produce specifications, measurements, best practices, and benchmarks that help operators make informed decisions. These must account for how servers, storage devices, and other IT equipment perform; how efficient the heating, cooling, and power-conditioning systems are (without requiring any change to product standards already set under a separate law, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act); energy savings from software and data-management techniques; and other factors that stakeholders raise. The program can create separate specifications for different data center sizes and functions, must push efficiency technology as far as is economically practical, and must give both private-sector and Federal data center operators useful information about best practices and purchasing choices that cut energy use — publishing that information through catalogs, trade publications, the internet, or other means. (c) Stakeholder involvement: The Secretary and the Administrator must carry out subsection (b) together with the IT industry and other key stakeholders, aiming for results that are as relevant and useful as possible. In choosing who to work with, they must pay special attention to organizations whose members have real expertise in efficiency and in data center, IT equipment, or software development and operation — including hardware makers, data center operators, and facility managers; organizations that get input from National Laboratories, universities, research institutions, industry groups, companies, or public interest groups with relevant expertise; organizations that follow accepted or accredited standards-development procedures; and organizations whose mission is to promote data center or IT energy efficiency. (d) Measurements and specifications: The Secretary and the Administrator must review whether the specifications, measurements, best practices, and benchmarks from subsection (b) are good enough to be used by the Federal Energy Management Program, the Energy Star Program, and other DOE or EPA efficiency programs. (e) Study: This subsection refers to a specific 2016 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report on U.S. data center energy usage, which had updated an earlier 2007 report to Congress. Within four years of December 27, 2020, the Secretary, working with the Administrator, had to publish an update to that report. The update must compare the report's old estimates against new data from 2015 through 2019; analyze the impact of technologies like virtualization and cloud computing in both public and private sectors; evaluate how cloud platforms, mobile devices, social media, and big data together affect data center energy use; evaluate water use in data centers and recommend ways to cut it; and give updated projections and best-practice recommendations through fiscal year 2025. (f) Data center energy practitioner program: The Secretary, working with key stakeholders and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, must maintain a certification program for "energy practitioners" qualified to evaluate energy use and savings opportunities in data centers the Federal Government owns or runs. Each Federal agency must consider having its own data centers evaluated by a certified practitioner once every four years, using its own certified staff when practical. (g) Open data initiative: The Secretary, again working with stakeholders and OMB, must set up an open data initiative for energy use at federally owned or operated data centers, meant to make that data available in a way that encourages further innovation, optimization, and consolidation of data centers. In building this initiative, the Secretary must consider using the online Data Center Maturity Model. (h) International specifications and metrics: The Secretary, with key stakeholders, must actively work to harmonize data center energy and water efficiency specifications and metrics across countries. (i) Data center utilization metric: The Secretary, with key stakeholders, must help develop a metric that measures a data center's overall energy efficiency, covering both its equipment and its facilities. (j) Protection of proprietary information: The Secretary and the Administrator may not disclose any proprietary information or trade secrets that an individual or company gives them for the purposes of this section or programs created under it.