Energy Efficient Government Technology Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. ESHOO. Madam Speaker, I'm pleased to rise today in support of my legislation, the Energy Efficient Government Technology Act, and I thank Chairman Pallone and my legislative partner Congressman Adam Kinzinger for their strong support of this bill.

Today, the world generates more data in twelve hours than was generated in all of human history prior to 2003. This data must be stored and processed at data centers which are the backbone of the 21th century economy, but they can be highly energy inefficient.

I first wrote legislation in 2005 requiring a report to Congress on the federal government's energy use and costs of data centers. At that time, I had to explain to colleagues what a data center was. Today, we routinely hear about them and most people understand that data centers are a critical part of our national infrastructure and are found in nearly every sector of our economy.

The rising importance of data centers in our everyday lives often goes unnoticed, but data centers now consume an estimated 2 percent of all electricity in the United States each year. Over the last decade, data center energy use has quadrupled and will continue to grow as our lives become increasingly tied to the digital world.

The federal government alone has more than 2,000 data centers which store everything from Social Security and tax records, to e-books at the Library of Congress. As the nation's largest landowner, employer, and energy user, the federal government should lead by example in this field.

The Energy Efficient Government Technology Act requires government agencies to develop plans to implement best practices, purchase more energy efficient information and communications technologies, and submit to periodic evaluation of their data centers for energy efficiency.

Importantly, the bill also requires government agencies to formulate specific performance goals and a means to calculate overall cost savings from improvements to energy efficiency.

Data centers are critical to our economy and our lives, but they can be extremely inefficient when it comes to energy use. Experts estimate that most data centers could slash their energy use by up to 80 or 90 percent by simply implementing existing technologies and best practices. Several Silicon Valley companies have taken the lead in developing efficient, sustainable data centers, but we can do much more across the private sector and government.

The Department of Energy estimates that implementation of best practices alone could reduce the government's data center energy bill by 20 to 40 percent. And the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions found that widespread adoption of energy efficient information technologies could save the federal government over $5 billion in energy costs over 10 years.

This legislation will not increase government spending. Instead, it has the potential to save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in reduced energy costs in the future, while setting an example for the private sector to reduce energy usage at data centers.

The Energy Efficient Government Technology Act passed the House by voice vote in the previous Congress and has strong support from both energy efficiency advocates and industry groups, including the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, the Alliance to Save Energy, the Information Technology Industry Council, and the U.S. Green Building Council, among others.

I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation.

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