Over the next two years, New York State will provide over $100 million through its Industrial and Process Efficiency program to help data centers and manufacturers control their energy costs and improve their competitiveness.
Funding will support energy studies and capital improvements that will increase energy efficiency and productivity and reduce waste, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) announced Tuesday.
While NYSERDA already offers incentives for all business sectors to retrofit existing buildings or to incorporate energy efficiency measures into new buildings, the new funding is specifically for data centers and manufacturers, which are among the largest consumers of energy and have significant potential for efficient growth.
To ensure the widest possible access to these energy efficiency funds, NYSERDA has awarded three companies approximately $2 million each to help manufacturers and data centers identify cost-effective energy savings options and educate these businesses on available funding. The companies are Clough Harbour & Associates (CHA) (Albany), Energy & Resource Solutions (ERS) (New York), and Willdan Energy Solutions (New York).
In 2009, NYSERDA invested approximately $4 million to improve the energy efficiency of the manufacturing and data center industries, reducing their energy consumption by nearly 41 million kilowatt hours of electricity—the equivalent of supplying nearly 6,300 single family homes with electricity for an entire year.
New York has the nation’s second largest concentration of data centers-—the centralized hubs that control the flow of computer information-—and the state’s investment over the next two years is expected to help the data center industry grow and support economic development.
Data centers are required for virtually every aspect of the economy. Recent studies conducted by Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that New York data centers spend nearly $600 million per year on energy costs and projected that their energy consumption could double in three to five years.
Funding for this new initiative is provided through the System Benefits Charge and is part of New York’s Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard.
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