DOE Announces $42 Million to Develop High-Performance Cooling Systems For Data Centers
DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) will fund projects that seek to reduce the amount of energy data centers use for cooling to lower the operational carbon footprint associated with powering and cooling data centers.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $42 million in funding to overcome technology barriers associated with the development of high-performance, energy-efficient cooling solutions for data centers. Used to house computers, storage systems, and computing infrastructure, data centers account for approximately 2% of total U.S. electricity production while data center cooling can account for up to 40% of data center energy usage overall. DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) will fund projects that seek to reduce the amount of energy data centers use for cooling to lower the operational carbon footprint associated with powering and cooling data centers. This funding will support President Joe Biden’s goals to reach net-zero carbon emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050.
“Extreme weather events, like the soaring temperatures much of the country experienced this summer, also impact data centers which connect critical computing and network infrastructure and must be kept at certain temperatures to remain operational,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Creating solutions to cool data centers efficiently and reduce the associated carbon emissions supports the technological breakthroughs needed to fight climate change and secure our clean energy future.”