A Market Transformation Programme for Improving Energy Efficiency in Data Centres

The European Code of Conduct for Data Centres is a voluntary market transformation programme addressing primarily data centre owners and operators, and secondly the supply chain. The Data Centres Code of Conduct has been created in response to increasing energy consumption in data centres and the need to reduce the related environmental, economic and energy supply impacts. The aim is to inform and stimulate operators and owners to reduce energy consumption in a cost-effective manner without hampering the critical function of data centres. It also introduces a set of metrics to measure the energy efficiency. The data centre supply industry can join the programme by offering products and solutions to help achieve the energy savings. Since the start of the programme in 2008, 220 data centres have been certified as Participant. The core of the programme is the commitment by the participant to carry out an initial energy audit to identify the major energy saving opportunities; to prepare an action plan; to implement the action plan; and to monitor energy consumption. This paper reports on the results achieved so far in terms of energy savings and technologies adopted.