As climate change intensifies and gas prices soar, which countries are leading the world in energy-saving efforts? Such efforts can halve U.S. energy use and planet-warming emissions. They can also increase energy security—unsettled by Russia's invasion of Ukraine—and reduce pain at the pump.

The 2022 International Energy Efficiency Scorecard ranks 25 of the world’s largest energy users on 36 efficiency metrics and highlights best practices all countries can use to boost energy savings. It scores them on policy measures and performance metrics, awarding up to 25 points in each of four categories: buildings, industry, transportation, and national efforts.

No country came close to a perfect score, and the average—48.5 out of 100—dipped slightly since the last scorecard in 2018. Yet some countries are taking bold steps such as increasing sales of electric vehicles (EVs) and adopting building performance standards, which require inefficient buildings to make energy-saving upgrades. How did your country score?

"This new report really does help us take stock and aspire to do more." — Kathleen Hogan, principal deputy undersecretary for infrastructure, U.S. Department of Energy

France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands all ranked as the world's most energy-efficient countries, according to a report card from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

The U.S. ranked 10th.

The report card, ACEEE's first since 2018 and fifth overall, graded the 25 largest energy-consuming countries based on 36 efficiency metrics. The average score of 48.5 out of 100 was down slightly since the last report. France, which ranked first, scored a 74.5.

Energy efficiency measures have never been more important with Russia's invasion of Ukraine causing a global energy crisis amid the pre-existing threats posed by climate change, according to ACEEE's executive director Steve Nadel.

Nadel described energy efficiency as the "least expensive way" to meet global energy demands.

The U.S.'s score of 54 out of 100 points dropped slightly since the last report due to the Trump administration's rollback of light-duty fuel economy standards, low public transit ridership, and limited investments in rail.

The building sector showed positive signs for energy efficiency, however. Mandatory appliance and equipment standards cover 50 product categories and many states have some of the world's strongest building codes, the authors wrote.

The report suggested that the U.S. could further improve building sector energy efficiency by reducing energy use intensity in residential buildings and implementing mandatory building labeling policies.

The U.S. scored lowest in the transportation category, in part due to 8,182 miles traveled in personal vehicles per capita annually, the most of any country assessed by the scorecard.

Electric vehicles, while growing rapidly in popularity, still only account for 2% of all new vehicle sales in the U.S.

In June, Top500 released its biannual Green500 ranking, featuring the world’s most energy-efficient supercomputers.

The Green500 list has evolved since the early 2000s, chronicling a positive trend of companies achieving higher efficiency and sustainability benchmarks over the years. The latest data reveals that high-performance computing (HPC) systems are inching closer to a median efficiency of 30 gigaflops per watt, or 30 billion floating-point operations for every watt of energy consumed.

The high turnover between the Green500 November 2022 and June 2023 rankings suggests an intense competition to match impressive computing power with ambitious sustainability goals.

The latest Green500 ranking was unveiled at ISC High Performance 2023 in Hamburg, Germany. Here’s a closer look at each of the energy-efficient supercomputers featured on the prestigious list.

10. Atos THX.A.B.

French IT giant Atos developed the THX.A.B. system using its BullSequana XH2000 HPC platform. Atos THX.A.B. achieves an energy efficiency of 41.411 Gflops per watt. The BullSequana XH2000 is an evolution of the XH1000 model and incorporates a patented Direct Liquid Cooling solution, which cools all critical components of the system.

Atos THX.A.B. debuted at the 5th position on the Green500 list in June 2022. However, its ranking gradually declined to 8th in November of the same year and further to 10th in the most recent June rankings.

The system runs on a Xeon Platinum 8358 32C 2.6GHz processor with 25,056 CPU cores. Additionally, Atos THX.A.B. is equipped with a Quad-rail NVIDIA HDR100 Infiniband interconnection. It achieved a peak efficiency performance of 3.5 PFlops/s, which translates to 3.5 quadrillion floating-point operations per second.

9. Goethe-NHR

Goethe University Frankfurt’s system is a recent addition to Germany’s National High Performance Computing Alliance. The Goethe-NHR system secured the No. 9 spot on Green500’s June list due to its energy efficiency of 46.543 Gflops per watt. The system was jointly manufactured by MEGWARE and Supermicro.

Goethe University Frankfurt

The Goethe-NHR system is designed to support computationally intensive research in the sciences. The upgraded system EPYC 7452 32C 2.35GHz processor and includes high-performance IBM Power9 CPUs. For efficient communication between components, it uses the Mellanox InfiniBand EDR interconnect.

8. amplitUDE (GPU partition)

Researchers in engineering and science at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany will have access to the future amplitUDE mainframe, which ranks as the 8th most energy-efficient supercomputer globally. The supercomputer, manufactured by MEGWARE, stands out for its innovative fanless compute nodes and direct water-cooling system.

During performance tests in Chemnitz, Germany, the amplitUDE GPU partition showed an energy efficiency of 51.343 GFlops per watt. The university website notes that it is the most energy-efficient system in Germany.

The amplitUDE operates on a Xeon Platinum 8480+ 56C 2GHz processor and is built with 6,768 CPU cores. Moreover, it is equipped with an Infiniband NDR interconnection.

7. LUMI

The LUMI HPE CRAY EX235A system is ranked as the 3rd most powerful and the 7th most energy-efficient supercomputer. The HPC is manufactured by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and is located in Kajaani, Finland.

Notably, the waste heat from the system is used to heat nearby homes. The naturally cool climate of the region also contributes to the system’s efficiency as it requires less energy for cooling.

LUMI’s system runs entirely on carbon-free hydroelectric energy. It boasts an efficiency ratio of 51.382 Gflops per watt.

The LUMI is powered by an AMD Optimized 3rd Generation EPYC 64C 2GHz processor and an AMD Instinct MI250X accelerator. It contains a total of 2.2 million cores and a Slingshot-11 interconnect.

6. Frontier

The Frontier supercomputer, located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, has the distinction of being the world’s first exascale computer. Its development is the result of over a decade of collaboration between scientists, academia, and private industry. Notably, the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project played a key role in this collaborative effort.

This year, the Frontier supercomputer achieved an energy efficiency of 52.592 Gflops per watt, thanks in part to its innovative cooling system, high-performance AMD Optimized 3rd Generation EPYC 64C 2GHz processor, and AMD Instinct MI250X accelerator.

The installation and testing of the 74 HPE Cray EX supercomputer cabinets took place during COVID-19 lockdowns. Since its debut on the Top500 in June 2022, Frontier has consistently remained one of the most powerful and energy-efficient systems worldwide.

5. Dardel GPU

The GPU partition of the Dardel HPC system at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden has been available to researchers since the spring of this year. It serves as a massively powerful resource for various fields such as computational fluid dynamics, climate modeling, AI, and more.

KTH Royal Institute of Technology

The Dardel GPU system, manufactured by HPE, consists of 56 GPU nodes and achieves an energy efficiency of 56.491 Gflops per watt. It has 52,864 cores and runs on an AMD Optimized 3rd Generation EPYC 64C 2GHz. Additionally, the system uses a Slingshot-11 interconnect with Dragonfly topology.

4. Setonix – GPU

The Setonix GPU system is located at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Kensington, Western Australia. It is modeled on the architecture of other cutting-edge exascale computer projects: an HPE CRAY EX235A system, AMD Optimized 3rd Generation EPYC 64C 2GHz processor, AMD Instinct MI250X accelerator, and a Slingshot-11 interconnect.

Setonix

In July 2022, the Setonix GPU system launched its first phase and scored an energy efficiency rating of 56.983 Gflops per watt.

3. Adastra

Like several other top energy-efficient supercomputers in the Green50 list, GENCI-CINES’ Adastra is an HPE Cray EX235a system with an AMD processor and accelerator and Slingshot-11 interconnect.

Since May 2022, French researchers have had access to Adastra for numerical simulation, high-performance data analytics, and AI tasks.

Adastra, which takes its name from the Latin phrase “to the stars,” achieved an efficiency ratio of 58.021 Gflops per watt.

2. Frontier TDS

The Frontier Test & Development System (TDS) is just one rack of the full Frontier system at Oak Ridge. The TDS achieved an efficiency of 62.684 Gflops per watt. That score is more than twice as efficient as the top-ranking supercomputer from just a few years ago, highlighting the HPC market’s rapid sustainability advancements.

1. Henri

For the second time, the Henri system in New York City’s Flatiron Institute has claimed the top spot on the Green500 list, solidifying its position as the most energy-efficient HPC system to date. The Henri system has a power efficiency ratio of 65.396 Gflops per watt.

Lenovo

Developed by Lenovo and NVIDIA, Henri is based on the ​​Lenovo ThinkSystem SR670 with Intel Xeon Platinum and Nvidia H100 components.

Top500 also notes that Henri showed vast improvements in performance between its first and second appearances on the Top500 list, leaping from the 405th spot to the 244th position. As a part of the elite group of ultra-powerful and increasingly energy-efficient supercomputers, Henri will undoubtedly serve as a critical tool for researchers pushing the boundaries of machine learning, quantum physics, and

Which country has the highest energy efficiency?

The Top 10 Countries in the 2022 International Energy Efficiency Scorecard.

What is the most efficient city in the world?

1. Reykjavik. Reykjavik stands out as one of the most energy efficient cities in the world. Its energy consumption for heat, electricity and hot water relies on renewable hydropower and geothermal plants.

Who is most energy

In 2022 France was named the most energy efficient country with a score of 74.5, second in place was the UK with 72.5, followed by the Netherlands and Germany, and 5th in place was Italy. As mentioned above the energy efficiency of a country is ranked based on four categories.

What is the highest energy efficiency rating?

How do energy labels work? Appliances are tested for how much energy they use during typical use. This gives them a rating on a scale of A to G, with A being the most efficient product of its class, and G being the least efficient.