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ISO/IEC/JTC 1, SC 39 Sustainability, IT and data centres Plenary highlights

On May 20, 2022, the virtual JTC 1/SC 39 Plenary opened with a warm welcome and greetings by the newly appointed SC 39 Chair, David Reiner.  

The plenary agenda contained three main topics under consideration:

  1. 1. Liaison activities and collaboration with the SC 39 community,
  2. 2. Further progression of the SC 39 standards projects, and
  3. 3. Future work and priorities of SC 39.

 The highlights and outcomes of the plenary includes further progression 4 projects.

  • Elevating ISO/IEC 30134-7, Information Technology — Data centres key performance indicators — Part 7: Cooling Efficiency Ratio (CER) from the committee draft stage (CD) to Draft International Standard (DIS).

  • Both ISO/IEC TS 8236 Information technology — Data Centre IT Equipment Provisioning — Forecasting & Management and ISO/IEC TS 22237-31 Information technology — Data centre facilities and infrastructures — Part 31: Key performance indicators for resilience have been requested for national body call for comments.

  • And ISO/IEC 30134-2:2016 Information technology — Data centres — Key performance indicators — Part 2: Power usage effectiveness (PUE) has been approved to be added the SC 39 Program of Work to start a revision looking at issues like the power usage effectiveness and liquid cooling.

The topic of closer collaboration with JTC 1/SC 42 (Artificial Intelligence) on AI and sustainability was expressed. There are many topics being explored such as: application of AI to the energy management of datacenters and the characterization of the sustainability of AI workloads. It is expected that these types of projects will need to have a close collaboration between SC 39 and SC 42.

SC 39 closed the plenary with its appreciation to all the attendees and participants as the work produced by SC 39 is all due to its leaders and participants alike. SC 39 gave a special appreciation to Phil Isaak for stepping in as acting convenor for the SC 39 Working Group 1 due to the unavailability of the WG 1 Convenor.

Next plenary is planned to take place between May 15th-19th, 2023 with the location to be determined.

The Technical Committee on IT and Data Center Sustainability, INCITS/ITS39, serves as the U.S. TAG to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 39 on Sustainability for and by Information Technology.


The INCITS/IT and Data Center Sustainability area of work will address standardization in the areas assigned to SC 39 which include:

  • Standardization related to the intersection of resource efficiency and Information Technology which supports sustainable development, application, operation and management aspects.
  • Development of a data center energy efficiency taxonomy and vocabulary.
  • Development of a holistic suite of metrics supporting universally accepted standardized Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
  • Development of a best practices for energy efficiency of data centers
  • Development of an energy management system standard specifically tailored for data centers.

Interested in becoming a participant and a member? Find out more information on membership in the INCITS Technical Committee on IT and Data Center Sustainability here.