Data Center Groups Lobby USGBC for New LEED Rating System

Packed with servers running 24 hours a day, data centers are energy hogs by nature. A coalition of public and private entities is pushing the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for a LEED rating system that would deal specifically with data centers. In an effort spearheaded by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and funded by the California Energy Commission, industry partners including the Green Grid, the Uptime Institute, and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) have created and submitted a draft set of guidelines to USGBC that they hope may be adopted as LEED for Data Centers as early as 2009.

Only a fraction of the total building stock, data centers have not been a high priority for USGBC in the past. The proposed guidelines would not use several common LEED credits that are only marginally relevant to data centers, while introducing several others that are more relevant. The draft guidelines are available for download at http://hightech.lbl.gov/dc-epc.html