Jamie Bennet
The Department of Energy has awarded $40 million in total to 15 projects focused on developing energy-efficient cooling systems for facilities that house computers, servers and other computing infrastructure.
The projects were chosen as part of the Biden administration’s goal to reduce the carbon footprint of critical infrastructure, DOE said Tuesday.
Data centers are responsible for an estimated 2 percent of U.S. energy consumption, with 40 percent of their electricity usage going to cooling systems.
To lower energy use and carbon emissions, DOE established the COOLERCHIPS program, which stands for Cooling Operations Optimized for Leaps in Energy, Reliability and Carbon Hyperefficiency for Information Processing Systems.
The selected teams will work on customized modular data centers, liquid cooling equipment, novel thermal management systems, and technology testing protocols that evaluate thermal resistance, cost-effectiveness and reliability.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm noted how data center operations could be affected by climate change. “DOE is funding projects that will ensure the continued operation of these facilities while reducing the associated carbon emissions to beat climate change and reach our clean energy future,” she added.
COOLERCHIPS program awardees are a combination of companies, research centers and universities. They are:
- Flexnode
- HP
- HRL Laboratories
- Intel
- JetCool Technologies
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory
- Nvidia
- Purdue University
- Raytheon Technologies
- University of California, Davis
- University of Florida
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- University of Maryland
- University of Missouri
- University of Texas at Arlington
