Data center operators and utility companies are failing to help each other make efficiencies, according to a new whitepaper by The Green Grid.

The paper identifies a lack of understanding and a failure to communicate, from both sides, as the industry fails to realize cost and energy savings.

The new white paper titled Green Carrots: Utility Incentive Programs and the IT Industry, is due out in July but some elements have been revealed in advance to DatacenterDynamics.

It identifies a number of blockages to progress as the power industry and the data center industry seek to work together to make efficiencies.

Data center owners are accused of a lack of knowledge, with many unaware of the incentives available to them from utility companies.

Utility companies, in turn, are criticized for the lack of self-awareness across their own industry.

According to The Green Grid, many individual utilities have studied their effectiveness but there has been no industry-wide investigation carried out.

Subsequently, there has been no cross-fertilization of ideas and no collaboration. Research into the utilities has been too narrow, the white paper results show.

Corban Lester, program development manager at Lockheed Martin and utility task force leader for The Green Grid said research found that individual utilities have studied the effectiveness of their own programs, but no quantitative industry-wide investigation has been done.

"The biggest opportunity for improvement with utility IT incentive programs lies in market awareness, followed by simplification and streamlining of application processes,” Lester said.

Among the expected recommendations are that utilities should take the lead in:

- Educating the market through information programs and training on efficiency

- Simplifying incentive application processes

- Offering simplified calculation tools to help customers

- Providing utility incentive programs that offer ways to address IT equipment, which is typically the largest energy user in a data center.

Electricity consumption in data centers rose 19% globally between 2011 and 2012.

Global consortium The Utility Task Force carried out the research.