The Green Grid is lobbying the U.S. Green Building Council to create a LEED certification for the data center.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system is a benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of green buildings. Developed by the USGBC, LEED recognizes building performance in five areas: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.

Some data centers are already billing themselves as environmental stewards by certifying under the USGBC’s LEED rating system. The LEED rating system was designed for commercial office buildings, not data centers. The requirements of IT departments have been so far opposite the sustainable design movement that the USGBC has so far opted not to address data center facilities at all. In fact, it is nearly impossible for a data center to qualify as a LEED facility unless it is included in a mixed-use construction project.

Data center experts and the USGBC agree that chasing LEED points is not a recommended method for data center construction, nonetheless a few facilities have qualified in recent years.

Prominent examples include the Fannie Mae Urbana Technology Center (UTC) located in Urbana, Md., a mixed use building that houses traditional office space as well as a data center. Another is Highmark Inc., a Pittsburgh, Pa.-based healthcare insurance company with a 90,000 square-foot facility hosting 28,000 square feet of raised flooring.

The fact that these companies — and many others — are willing to jump serious hurdles to validate their green efforts in the data center points to a huge demand for data center “green” ratings. While there are only a handful of USGBC certified data centers in the country, several companies like solar-powered hosting company AISO, collocation giant 365 Main and IBM have pledged to pursue USGBC’s LEED ratings in the data center.

Additionally, every conference I’ve attended in the past year that has offered a LEED data center session has been overflowing with attendees. The demand is there.

IT organizations like The Green Grid and The Uptime Institute have been lobbying the USGBC to work with them to develop a LEED rating system for the data center. The popularity of such a rating system would be undeniable — vendors would be racing to validate their green efforts in their own data centers, hosting and other customer facing companies would also benefit from having a green seal of approval.

Unfortunately, developing LEED-DC is going to be a huge challenge. The USGBC is not a government entity — it’s a consortium of light bulb, carpeting, and furniture vendors and architects. The group has experienced massive growth and popularity and it is challenged to keep up with its own ambitious agenda. Hence, it has been reluctant to open this data center can of worms.

The USGBC doesn’t have the incentive, expertise or bandwidth to deal with data centers. But it is the most popular green seal of approval on the market today. The Green Grid says there will be a green seal of approval your data center in the near future — whether or not it will come from the U.S. Green Buildings Council, the EPA or some combination of the groups is yet to be determined.