Political Quotes

“I'm pleased to rise today in support of my legislation, the Energy Efficient Government Technology Act, and I thank Chairman Pallone and my legislative partner Congressman Adam Kinzinger for their strong support of this bill. Today, the world generates more data in twelve hours than was generated in all of human history prior to 2003. This data must be stored and processed at data centers which are the backbone of the 21th century economy, but they can be highly energy inefficient. I first wrote legislation in 2005 requiring a report to Congress on the federal government's energy use and costs of data centers. At that time, I had to explain to colleagues what a data center was. Today, we routinely hear about them and most people understand that data centers are a critical part of our national infrastructure and are found in nearly every sector of our economy. The rising importance of data centers in our everyday lives often goes unnoticed, but data centers now consume an estimated 2 percent of all electricity in the United States each year. Over the last decade, data center energy use has quadrupled and will continue to grow as our lives become increasingly tied to the digital world. The federal government alone has more than 2,000 data centers which store everything from Social Security and tax records, to e-books at the Library of Congress.…”