The Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) measurement standard has been chosen by Government organisations in three continents as the common standard for measuring the energy efficiency of data centres. This will allow data centre operators to measure, calculate, improve and communicate the energy efficiencies of their data centres worldwide. Although global taskforce has reached agreement on measurement protocols for PUE, the discussion still continues over additional energy efficiency metrics.

The data centre has become an increasingly important part of most business operations in the twenty-first century. With escalating demand and rising energy prices, it is essential for the owners and operators of these mission critical facilities to assess and improve their performance with energy efficiency metrics. However, even with the global presence of many companies, these metrics are often not applied consistently at a global level.

To address these inconsistencies, a group of global leaders has been meeting regularly to agree on standard approaches and reporting conventions for key energy efficiency metrics. For that purpose, this global taskforce has established and developed the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) standard, which determines the amount of energy used by a data centre considering the amount of IT gear inside of it such as servers, etc., and will now be applied by data centre operators in the U.S, Europe, and Japan. The task force will continue to collaborate in the years ahead to ensure that data centre resource efficiency and productivity is delivered as consistently as possible across regions.

The Global Harmonisation Task Force for Data Centre Metrics includes the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the Green Grid Association (the IT industry's association for efficiency in data centres), the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry as well as the Japanese Green IT Promotion Council.

The JRC is therefore a full partner in the harmonisation task force for data centre measurement standards, for whose work, it has provided technical knowledge and expertise gained through its work on the ICT Codes of Conduct for energy efficiency in collaboration with Member State experts. This includes the work made over the European Codes of Conduct for ICT, which are managed by the JRC, such as EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres and the EU Code of Conduct on Energy Consumption of Broadband Communication Equipment.