Received in the Senate and Read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Congressional Research Service
Official summary
Version 81 · Passed House without amendment · Jan 10, 2017
(This measure has not been amended since it was introduced. The summary has been expanded because action occurred on the measure.)
Energy Efficient Government Technology Act
(Sec. 2) This bill amends the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 by requiring each federal agency to coordinate with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the Environmental Protection Agency to develop an implementation strategy for the maintenance, purchase, and use by the agency of energy-efficient and energy-saving information technologies. The OMB must establish performance goals for evaluating the efforts of agencies in improving the maintenance, purchase, and use of the technology. The executive branch's Chief Information Officers Council must recommend best practices for attaining the performance goals, including consideration of the use of energy savings performance and utility energy services contracting.
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Agencies must include in their annual government efficiency status reports a description of those energy-saving efforts and their results, and the OMB must begin to include in its annual government efficiency report a description of agencies' efforts and results.
(Sec. 3) DOE must make available to the public an update to the Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency published on August 2, 2007, that includes evaluations of: (1) the impact of the combination of cloud platforms, mobile devices, social media, and big data on data center energy usage; and (2) water usage in data centers.
In collaboration with key stakeholders and the OMB, DOE must also: (1) maintain a data center energy practitioner program that leads to the certification of energy practitioners qualified to evaluate the energy usage and efficiency opportunities in federal data centers; and (2) establish an open data initiative to make information about federal data center energy usage available and accessible while encouraging data center innovation, optimization, and consolidation.
In collaboration with key stakeholders, DOE must: (1) participate in efforts to harmonize global specifications and metrics for data center energy and water efficiency, and (2) facilitate the development of a metric for data center energy efficiency.
Source last updated: Sep 8, 2026. Consult Congress.gov for the current record.
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