Europe is ahead of the US when it comes to running ‘green’ data centres, but the lack of a clear industry standard is holding both back further improvement, according to research by data centre provider Digital Realty Trust.

A survey of senior data centre decision-makers from large companies in the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Ireland found that 60% have a declared green strategy and over 60% include the purchase of carbon credits in that strategy.

Half of the European respondents required their vendors to have a green strategy, but fewer than 35% could name a data centre partner with a green strategy.

Meanwhile, a parallel survey of US data centre leaders found progress had stalled and, in some cases, slipped. Just over half of US companies surveyed said they had a green data centre strategy, a decline of four percentage points from a similar survey last year.

Just 18% of US companies said they would be using carbon credits in their green data centre strategies, a fall of seven percentage points on last year, although the report’s authors suggested that this could mean companies reducing their energy use rather than offsetting it.

Further reading

Energising the Green IT debate Two new reports on power consumption highlight the urgent need for greater energy efficiency in IT

The new data centre As the subject of energy use moves ever higher on the IT agenda, efficiency has become the watchword for data centre operations

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