Datapipe, US-based managed services and managed hosting provider, has joined a short list of data center services companies that are members of the US Environmental Protection Agency's program that gives companies recognition for buying a substantial amount of renewable energy to power their operations.

While requirements for membership in EPA's Green Power Partnership are nowhere near being this high, Datapipe has purchased enough renewable energy to power all three of its US data centers 100%. The company has purchased about 56m kWh ÔÇô enough to fully power its facilities in San Jose, California, and Somerset, New Jersey.

The San Jose data center provides about 68,000 sq ft of raised floor;one of the two Somerset data centers houses about 36,000 sq ft of raised floor and the other houses about 57,000 sq ft. Datapipe also has sites in Europe and Asia which were not part of the announcement.

Susan Wickwire, acting director of the EPA's Climate Protection Partnership division, commented on the Datapipe energy purchase: "We applaud their leadership to use renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

While the list of members in the agency's Green Power Partnership is long, it does not include a lot of IT companies, and especially not a lot of data center services companies. The few data center firms that are on it include Terremark, Canvas Dreams, an Oregon-based hosting company, and now Datapipe.

Some of the well-known IT vendors on the list are AMD, Apple, Cisco, Dell, IBM, Intel and Oracle, among others.

The EPA does not require companies to purchase enough renewable energy to power their entire operations to become a member. The largest electricity consumers have to buy enough to cover 3% of their total energy use and the smallest consumers have to buy 20%.

Terremark, for example, has bought enough to cover about 11% of its energy consumption. Canvas Dreams (a much smaller operation than Terremark) has bought 100%.