The interesting thing is that Google has always been on the cutting edge of figuring out ways to consume less energy, and there concern is that the new standards might not let them try new and novel ways of cooling their data centers.
http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/google-amazon-microsoft-nokia-protest-data-center-cooling-standard/5907/We believe that for data centers, where the energy used to perform a function (e.g., cooling) is easily measured, efficiency standards should be performance-based, not prescriptive. In other words, the standard should set the required efficiency without prescribing the specific technologies to accomplish that goal. That’s how many efficiency standards work; for example, fuel efficiency standards for cars specify how much gas a car can consume per mile of driving but not what engine to use. A performance-based standard for data centers can achieve the desired energy saving results while still enabling our industry to innovate and find new ways to improve our products.Dupont, Amazon, Nokia and Microsoft joined Google in a joint statement:
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/04/setting-efficiency-goals-for-data.html