The Environmental Protection Agency program has been trying to get data centers to commit to submitting it data so that it can develop an Energy Star rating for data centers. Its original deadline for data centers to submit a form of interest was June 1, but the agency has now extended it for one more month in the hope of getting more companies to bite.

Andrew Fanara of the EPA’s Energy Star program spoke last month about the National Data Center Energy Efficiency Information Program.

Late last month, I spoke to Fanara at a different event in Chicago about how the data collection was going. He said at the time that it had been slow, although there were a few users at the event who expressed interest in submitting data.

The basic idea is that data centers commit to monitoring, measuring and submitting information about their data center’s energy use to the EPA on a regular basis. All of the information is kept confidential, although the EPA will let each individual company know how they did. The EPA will then collect that data and use it to help create an Energy Star rating for data centers.

Earlier this week I got in touch with Fanara to see how the data collection was going, especially considering the deadline extension. He seemed more encouraged, saying that about 200 data centers had signed on thus far.

That’s much better than at the Chicago event, where Fanara said that “response from the industry has been extremely slow.”

Hopefully in another month they’ll get even more users to commit to submitting data. If you’re interested, visit the Energy Star’s data center site.