Energy efficient data centres

Data centres (DCs) are foundational digital infrastructure, underpinning cloud computing, data storage, and the delivery of various online services across different economic sectors. Their increased growth in all regions of the globe reinforces the need to continue the E²DC workshop series which focuses on innovative methods to improve energy-efficiency of DCs. E²DC concentrates on a broader context of the DC ecosystem by investigating its interactions with smart cities and grids, and other sector couplings. Additionally, scientific approaches to address the broader environmental impact of digital services needs to be addressed through methods that optimize for the dual goals of environmental sustainability and energy usage. In addition to the general workshop topics around energy efficiency and sustainability, the workshop is envisaged to include research of how AI technologies can help improve DC efficiency, reliability, and assist in broadening their interaction with external dynamically growing systems such as smart cities and smart grids, and next generation district heating networks.

14^th International Workshop on Energy-Efficient Data Centres (E²DC 2026)

This year we concentrate on the intersection of computing workloads and energy networks reliability and stability. The specific focus will be on the emerging challenges of maintaining high reliability for critical compute tasks while unlocking the flexibility required to support a sustainable, constrained power grid. The workshop provides a forum for scientists, engineers, and practitioners to exchange ideas on how data centers can evolve from passive loads into active grid assets. We will explore how "interruptible" loads can provide demand response, frequency regulation, and voltage support without compromising computational service level objectives (SLOs).

Call for Papers

The workshop invites original papers of up to 8 pages that have not been previously published or currently under consideration and/or review for publication elsewhere. Topics include, but are not limited to:

• New architectures of the data centre ecosystem to cope with dynamic demands and requirements of large data processing, e.g. distributed data centres, edge data centres.
• Innovative use of new hardware and software technologies, including novel cooling approaches and coordination with backup and battery operations.
• Data center and computing load modeling, measurement and forecast.
• Workload scheduling and shifting for demand response, peak and ramp shaving.
• Integration and interaction with energy grids, e.g. demand side response approaches for power grids, waste heat re-use in district heating networks, approaches to maximise the use of renewable energy sources in data centres, etc.
• Understanding and mitigating the impact of bursty AI training/inference loads on local grids.
• Reliability metrics for grid-interactive data centers.
• Virtual Power Plants (VPP) utilizing distributed compute resources.
• Hardware-software co-design for energy-aware computing.

Submission and publication of the work

The workshop will be co-located with ACM e-Energy 2026 Please submit your manuscript via submission portal. Manuscripts will be published in the ACM proceedings and must adhere to ACM format (with 8 pages limit including references). Submission implies the willingness of at least one author to register and present the paper at E²DC. The organizers reserve the right to exclude a paper from publication if it is not presented. For more information please contact the organizers: Ariel Oleksiak (ariel at man.poznan.pl), Jon Summers (jon.summers at ri.se), Shaohui Liu (shaohuil at mit.edu), Deepjyoti Deka (deepj87 at mit.edu)

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Alfonso Ortega
(Villanova University, USA)

E²DC WORKSHOP PROGRAM 2026

Contact

Ariel Oleksiak (ariel at man.poznan.pl)
Jon Summers (jon.summers at ri.se)
Shaohui Liu (shaohuil at mit.edu)
Deepjyoti Deka (deepj87 at mit.edu)