Nearly half of data center operators that participated in a recent survey by the Uptime Institute said reporting carbon emissions related to their data centers was important for their organization. Of more than 500 operators surveyed, 45% said carbon reporting was a big deal for them.

The bulk of survey participants were based in North America, which does not have nearly as strict carbon-emission regulations as do Western European nations. The 45% figure, however, coincides with the 45% of respondents that said their pursuit of data center energy efficiency was motivated by a corporate social-responsibility initiative.

Survey results did not indicate whether the people that said carbon reporting was important to them were the same people that said they had a social responsibility program that pushed them to increase energy efficiency.

The Uptime Institute surveyed 525 data center owners and operators on a variety of core issues that affect the industry. About a fifth of participants work in the financial industry and another fifth is made up of colocation and managed-services providers. Operators of government data centers made up 9% of the participants.

North American data center operators comprised more than 70% of the participants. Majority of the rest rest were from Europe and Asia.

The survey included issues of measuring energy efficiency, construction and expansion plans, interest in cloud computing and interest in containers, among other subjects.

While carbon reporting was high on the list of concerns, reporting of water usage was not as top-of-mind, with 33% of respondents saying it was important to report how much water their facilities consume. Those who said it was not important comprised 38% of participants.

The results indicated that data center construction boom is nowhere close to an end. When asked whether their company will build a new data center or upgrade an existing one between 2011 and 2014, 60% of respondents said ‘yes’.

About a third of respondents that said they would run out of data center capacity before 2012 also said they would take colocation space to address those shortages.

Here is some more data the survey generated provided by the Uptime Institute: