In a new report on the state of, and opportunities for, data center energy efficiency, the Natural Resources Defense Council finds:
“If just half of the technical savings potential for data center efficiency that we identify in this report were realized (to take into account the market barriers discussed in this report), electricity consumption in U.S. data centers could be cut by as much as 40 percent. In 2014, this represents a savings of 39 billion kilowatt-hours annually, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of all the households in the state of Michigan. Such improvement would save U.S. businesses $3.8 billion a year.”
The report breaks down types of data centers and finds that nearly half of all computing is stored in small-to-medium sized data centers (vs. enterprise or corporate spaces, or large leased “colocations”). The report also goes through a number of best practices in data center energy efficiency, including IT-side improvements (e.g., server virtualization, storage upgrades, etc). To read the report in full, click here.