IDA's Green ICT efforts are focused on improving energy efficiency of data centres which are heavy users of energy. Based on IDA's internal estimates, the 10 largest data centre operators in Singapore account for energy consumption that is equivalent to 130,000 typical HDB households. An energy efficiency improvement of 20 per cent in the existing stock of commercial data centres in Singapore can therefore yield combined annual savings in excess of S$34 million.

The Green Data Centre programme aims to boost the competitiveness of the data centre industry by raising their overall energy efficiency. The major tenets of the programme are:

1. To establish a common yardstick for energy efficiency in the form of Singapore-specific standards, metrics and best practices which will help data centre operators to realise cost savings.
   
   
2. To raise efficiency through rating, recognition and incentives. For example, data centres are encouraged to go green by assessing their performance and publicly recognising and rewarding those that excel in their greening initiatives.
   
   
3. To foster innovation by creating a conducive environment for the development and adoption of innovative green data centre-related products, solutions and services.
   
   

Programmes and Initiatives

• Green Data Centre Innovation Challenge Call for Collaboration
  IDA has introduced the Green Data Centre Innovation Challenge to encourage the industry to think "out of the box" and come up with innovative solutions that will significantly improve energy efficiency in the data centre sector. Winners of the challenge will be supported for a pilot implementation of their proposed solution.
  
  
• Green Data Centre Standard
  To reduce the energy consumption and operating costs of data centres and enhance their competitiveness, IDA partnered other government agencies and the industry to develop a Singapore Standard for Green Data Centres under the IT Standards Committee.
  
  
• BCA-IDA Green Mark for Data Centres
  To provide recognition to data centre operators that have successfully deployed Green Data Centre best practices and demonstrated superior energy and environmental performance, BCA and IDA have developed the Green Mark scheme for Data Centres . The scheme comprises of a rating system which enables DCs to benchmark their degree of greenness with respect to their peers. Rating DCs in categories such as "Platinum", "Gold ^PLUS " and "Gold" provides the impetus for DC operators to track, manage and improve their energy efficiency performance to reduce operating cost and also improve the corporate branding.