A group of global IT regulations organizations and providers recently announced that they have developed a globally recognized standard for energy efficiency at data centers operated by cloud computing providers, according to ZDNet.com. Power-usage effectiveness will now be the preferred standard for all data centers.

The organizations believe that PUE will provide data centers with trustworthy data that allows them to compare progress accurately against each other.

"Once you've reported the PUE value, you can make comparisons across data centers. What we're looking at here is getting an agreement among the various bodies of standardization for an initial metric, so we've got a consistent set of metrics to report the energy efficiency of the data centers," Alan Priestley, member of Green Grid's EMEA technical working group, told the news provider.

Some did argue against the adoption of the PUE, claiming that the unit will not provide an accurate assessment of some data centers compared to others - especially for those of disproportionate size. The detractors believe that simply adopting a set of renewable energy usage and conservation standards will suffice.

The announcement comes shortly after Greenpeace challenged cloud computing vendors to reduce emissions from their data centers. The environmental organization found that Microsoft and Google house data centers that use fewer than 4 percent renewable energy.ADNFCR-2553-ID-19711520-ADNFCR