The study uses data from the Uptime Institute, a research and advisory organization for data center users, was released on Wednesday at the Green Enterprise Computing Symposium in Orlando, Florida and predominantly focuses on the cost and energy saving opportunities being "squandered" today in corporate and government data centers.

According to reports in the New York Times, William Forrest, the lead McKinsey consultant on the report, says that the carbon dioxide emissions attributable to the electricity consumed by fast-expanding data centers will rise fourfold by 2020 and that the greenhouse gas impact of data centers is "not yet counted and likely to be very significant."

McKinsey calls for the creation of a metric that combines the energy efficiency of a data center facility with the utilization of IT gear that runs in data centers, according to reports on CNET. The study calls the proposed metric CADE, for Corporate Average Data Efficiency, which is the server equivalent to CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy), the US government's fuel efficiency standards for cars.

Although there have been different industry groups created, such as the Green Grid (thegreengrid.org) or utility providers like Pacific Gas & Electric working with data center operators on energy efficiency programs, on the whole, energy usage at data centers continues to go up, says CNET.

Forrest says that's because servers today consume more power, the number of servers is increasing and the cost of electricity is going up.

McKinsey and the Uptime Institute conclude that web hosting providers and data center operators should aim to double energy efficiency by 2012 through more efficient individual components and a comprehensive data center management plan.

The study also lists 10 "game-changing improvements" intended to double data center efficiency, ranging from solutions like using virtualization software to integrated control of cooling units, says the New York Times.