US Department of Energy has hired Lockheed Martin to help consolidate its data centers. Under a government-wide data center consolidation initiative, the feds are expecting to close more than 800 agency data centers by 2015 to rein in the sprawl of the federal data center infrastructure, whose size is estimated to exceed 2,000 facilities.

The DoE has so far identified five data centers to be closed before 2012, one of which, a facility in Las Vegas, has already been shut down, according to Data.gov. The other four are in Washington, D.C., Albuquerque, New Mexico, Miamisburg, Ohio, and another one in Las Vegas.

Greg Caplan, senior manager for energy performance contracting at Lockheed Martin, said the company has implemented energy efficiency measures at DoE’s Hanford Site in Washington State (formerly a production facility for nuclear-weapon-grade plutonium) and would bring best practices applied there across the department.

"Together we have proven that sustainable IT practices, such as data center consolidation, virtualization and cloud computing, can help federal agencies reach their sustainability goals and save money for citizens," Caplan said in a statement.

This is the first contract awarded under the Federal Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC) program that is focused on sustainability through improved IT, according to the contractor.

In addition to design and implementation, Lockheed Martin will arrange financing for the projects it performs under the contract. Projects under the program are required not only to create savings but also to generate positive annual cash flow.

ESPCs are a way to provide budget-neutral energy efficiency projects to government agencies, Caplan explained.