US data centres have the potential to save up to $4bn (£1.97bn) in annual electricity costs, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The EPA's Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency recommends the top-priority efficiency opportunities and policies that can lead to further savings using state-of-the-art technologies and operations.
The agency says aggressive server and storage consolidation, power management and liquid cooling could reduce a data centre's energy use by 55 per cent.
The energy consumption of servers and data centres has doubled in the past five years and is expected to almost double again in the next five years to more than 100 billion kilowatts an hour, costing the US about $7.4bn (£3.65bn) annually.
The EPA highlights a lack of education as being a barrier to adopting energy-efficient measures, as well as separation of responsibility between IT departments and facilities managers.
The increasing shift of the US economy from paper-based to digital information management in the business, communication, academic, and governmentl sectors prompted Congress to commission the report.
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