Data centre energy consumption doubled between 2000 and 2005 and grew by 50% from 2005 to 2010. On average, computing consumes 60% of the total energy, whereas cooling consumes 35%. Although new technologies can lead to a 40% reduction, computation and cooling typically operate without coordination or optimisation. Server energy management can reduce energy consumption at the CPU, rack, and DC levels, but dynamic computation scheduling is not integrated with sensing and cooling.

Data centre cooling typically operates at a constant cold air temperature to protect the hottest server racks while local fans distribute the temperature across the racks. However, these local server controls are not integrated with room cooling systems, so it is not possible to optimise chiller, air fans and server fans as a system.

The integration of renewable energy sources has received limited interest from the DC community due to lack of interoperability of generation, storage and heat recovery and installation and maintenance cost versus payback. The adoption of new technologies related to computing, cooling, generation, energy storage, and waste heat recovery individually requires sophisticated controls, but no single manufacturer provides a complete system so integration between control systems does not exist.

The objective of this workshop is to bring together researchers and technologists from academia and industry to explore the topic of sustainability of data centre and cloud computing, particularly from an energy perspective.