DuPont Fabros, one of the biggest providers of wholesale data center space in the US, has received a LEED Gold certification for one of its data centers from the US Green Building Council.

USGBC awards LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification to new or retrofitted buildings that are designed, built and operated with environmental sustainability in mind. Gold is the second-highest tier of LEED, following LEED Platinum.

USGBC gave DuPont LEED Gold for the developer's NJ1 data center in Piscataway, New Jersey. This is the company's second data center to receive LEED certification. The first one was ACC5 in Ashburn, Virginia, which received LEED Gold in 2010.

DuPont president and CEO Hossein Fateh said in a statement the company's data centers were engineered for highest efficiency without compromising reliability. "Many of the LEED elements incorporated into NJ1 help improve these efficiencies, which ultimately drive down our tenant's total cost of occupancy."

NJ1 is one of the company's newest data centers. As of the end of March, the 180,000-sq-ft building had 88,000 sq ft of raised floor built out, offering a total of 18.2MW of critical load, according to DuPont's earnings report for the first quarter of 2011.

At that time, the site was 22% leased.

Including NJ1, DuPont Fabros has eight operating data center properties around the US, which at the end of March contained more than 900,000 sq ft of raised floor and more than 156MW of critical power.

USGBC's LEED certification system is recognized internationally. According to the council, the system provides building owners and operators with a framework for identifying and implementing "practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions."