NRDC Acknowledges Its Data Center Energy Estimates Were Off

"Another point of agreement is that the total amount of energy consumption in the US is still enormous, and that there are no signs that demand for data center capacity will slow. As Delforge pointed out in his blog post, the amount of carbon emissions associated with generating 70 billion kWh of energy is about equivalent to the monthly carbon output of the UK, the world’s fifth largest economy.

Both Delforge and authors of the DOE report cautioned that the recent gains in efficiency don’t mean the problem of growing data center energy use has been solved for good."

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2016/07/01/activist-group-nrdc-reacts-to-doe-data-center-energy-study/