A lot of green data center activists will be annoyed with Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn. Just before the holidays, the self-proclaimed climate change denier blocked the passage of an Energy Efficiency Improvement Bill which aimed to make government data centers more efficient.

The Green Grid has been applauding the progress of the Bill, which passed the House of Representatives in March, and was supposed to sail through the Senate on a unanimous vote. But Coburn shot it down, in pretty much his last act in the Senate: he’s retiring due to ill health.

Data center efficiency is a good thing; who would vote against it? Who but Senator Coburn, a man who can deny the manifest evidence of climate change, who has also voted in favour of drilling in Arctic wildlife reserves, and against a Clean Air Act.

It looks like the grinch stole green data centers’ Christmas.

What is really happening?
But government efficiency is a tricky thing to pin down and we should at least examine what the Senator says, even if he is one of those politicians who look so bizarre to people outside the US, arguing for unlimited gun ownership and the death penalty, and at the same time  calling himself “pro-life”.

His objection to the Bill may have more sense to it though. It is based on gathering information. Earlier in the year, he proposed an amendment to it, so that instead of requiring government agencies to “conduct assessments of data centers and develop data center consolidation and optimization plans,” it would require bodies to report annually and gather data on energy usage.

He may have a point there.

Joined up thinking
More efficiency in data centers is a good thing, but today’s efficiency measures only determine how good a data center is at powering the IT hardware, not how well that hardware is used. If as Sen. Coburn points out, the IT kit has a low utilization rate, then the government could be aiming for the wrong goal.

The US Federal government already has a plan in place to close 40 percent of its data centers, consolidating them, increasing utilization and saving energy. That’s apparently going well, with claims this year that it saved $1.1 billion, though it’s been hampered by poor data and reporting.

Another initiative aimed at Government facilities is the Better Buildings campaign, which is encouraging data centers to save 20 percent of their energy. That’s been criticised because it seems to ignore the improvements in data center energy use which are already routinely beating that target.

The Bill wanted to “incorporate energy efficiency goals into IT acquisition; release information on federal data center energy use; and report on the impact of cloud, mobile and other technologies on federal energy consumption,”

All of which could be a bit vague, and disconnected from other initiatives. An Act which sets the wrong goals might actually be counterproductive.

The energy efficiency Bill will be back in the New Year. Senator Coburn won’t be - and we wish him a cosy retirement, hopefully well-insulated from the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, let’s see if the US government can get a joined-up policy on data center efficiency.

A version of this post appeared on Green Data Center News.