NEW YORK, NY—U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with The Green Grid to increase energy efficiency in the ever-growing information technology sector. Assistant Secretary Karsner and John Tuccillo, director of The Green Grid, signed the MOU at the New York Stock Exchange, kicking off a day of in-depth discussions with operators of financial services data centers.

“The agreement signed today with The Green Grid builds on the Department’s continued effort to improve energy efficiency in the private sector,” Assistant Secretary Karsner said.  “Data centers represent an important part of the information economy and joining forces with The Green Grid puts us on a path to identify and build the necessary tools for thousands of data centers to more easily capture energy savings.”

The DOE-Green Grid MOU focuses on assisting data center operators and facilities to initiate and implement an energy management program and adopt clean energy and efficiency technologies.  Specifically, the MOU identifies future activities DOE and The Green Grid may collaborate on to: develop a common set of metrics and tools; develop a website so data centers can easily access tools and resources to initiate and implement an energy management program; encourage data centers to obtain energy savings assessments; train company personnel in conducting energy savings assessments and in using tools to identify energy efficiency enhancements; and define areas of pre-competitive research and development for data center operations. 

As part of Assistant Secretary Karsner’s discussions, DOE and The Green Grid have also set a common goal of improving overall energy efficiency in data centers by 10 percent by 2011, factoring in current projected data center use. 

To view the MOU and for more information on DOE’s energy savings assessments, visit: www.eere.energy.gov/datacenters.