The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ENERGY STAR Program announced that the energy performance rating for data center infrastructure will be released in Portfolio Manager on June 7. After closely working with the data center industry for over two years to collect energy and operating data, EPA has used the data provided by over 120 data centers across the country to develop a rating that will help data center operators understand how their data centers are performing in terms of energy efficiency compared to others across the country.

The final 1-to-100 energy performance rating will be based on the actual power usage effectiveness (PUE) of a data center compared to the predicted PUE based on a building’s annual IT energy consumption. PUE, a standard industry metric, equals the total energy consumption of a data center (for all fuels) divided by the energy consumption used for the IT equipment, as measured at the output of the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) meter. EPA has prepared the attached overview of the new rating and the rating development process.