DOE announces millions in funding to develop cooling solutions for data centers

May 10 (UPI) -- In an effort to reduce energy consumption, the Biden administration has announced tens of millions in funding to develop energy efficient cooling solutions for data centers.

Data centers, which house IT infrastructure, are among the most energy-intensive buildings in the country, consuming up to 50 times the energy of a normal office building per floor space and accounting for some 2% of all U.S. electricity use, according to U.S. government data.

With cooling accounting for up to 40% of a data center's energy use, the U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced $40 million for 15 projects that aim to reduce the energy necessary to cool this high-consumption facilities.

"Climate change, including severe weather events threatens the functionality of data centers that are critical to connecting computing and network infrastructure that power our everyday lives," U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.

The projects were selected as part of the Department of Energy's Cooling Operations Optimized for Leaps in Energy Reliability and Carbon Hyper-efficiency for Information Processing Systems program, also known as COOLERCHIPS.

Software company Nvidia in Santa Clara, Calif., received the largest funding package at $5 million, which will go toward what the Energy Department called "a novel modular data center with an innovative cooling system that combines direct-to-chip, pumped two-phase and single-phase immersion in a rack manifold with built-in pumps and a liquid vapor separator."

University of California, Davis, received the second most amount of funding at $3.58 million to develop a "suite of holistic thermal management solutions" for modular data centers that house edge computing.

"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 or clean energy future," Granholm said.