Uptime Institute

Uptime Institute is a New York-based data-centre research and standards body, founded in 1993, best known for its Tier I-IV reliability certification and its annual Global Data Center Survey benchmarking power usage effectiveness (PUE) and water usage effectiveness (WUE) across the industry. Its Tier certifications function as a de facto accreditation standard required by enterprise and government customers in regulated sectors including finance, healthcare, and government.

In July 2026, Uptime Institute's own analysis, US data center critics pivot from moratoria to regulations, documented that most state-level moratorium bills have failed to pass, prompting opponents to shift toward targeted zoning and disclosure rules instead. The report cites Indiana, where roughly 30 of 92 counties now restrict data centres and Indianapolis's Metropolitan Development Commission voted 5-3 on 1 July to advance new zoning rules rather than impose a blanket freeze. Uptime analysts have also been cited on the intersection of AI workloads and PUE: AI training clusters run at much higher power densities than traditional enterprise servers, which can degrade PUE where cooling infrastructure has not been upgraded, and on the transformer and gas-turbine supply constraints limiting how fast new capacity can come online.