The sustainability need within the data center industry is gaining more momentum as the global demand for digital services and data is going upwards. It has sparked the construction of data centers in many parts of the world, which leads to an increase in energy consumption, thereby having a significant effect on the environment. The blog seeks to emphasize the need for sustainability in data centers and expound on imperative issues businesses should focus on while implementing eco-friendly practices.
Environmental Implications of the Rising Data Centers.
Data centers are a fundamental infrastructure of the digital economy as they provide the necessary data storage, processing, and data distribution services. It has a huge operational footprint, which is mainly because of energy consumption and water usage. The ICT sector, of which data centers are a part, is currently responsible for around 2% of global greenhouse emissions – comparable with the aviation industry. In the US, the data centers take the highest energy consumption rank. With the increased watch from environmental groups and public stakeholders, there is a need for businesses to adopt more sustainable practices in their data center operations.
Data Center Sustainability: A holistic approach.
Sustainability in data centers covers different techniques that have the goal of lessening their environmental imprint. The objective is to reach zero carbon emissions using innovative techniques focused on energy efficiency, water conservation, and renewable energy production amongst others.
Energy Efficiency
Concerning sustainable data centers there are two most significant factors: energy efficiency and eco-friendliness. This, in particular, is the case of taking into consideration energy-efficient server technologies, cooling systems, and data center design. Advanced techniques such as free cooling that can pull in the cold air to the servers, will also help in saving energy to a large extent. Moreover, this capable server virtualization is a contributing factor towards enabling a high degree of resource utilization which results in fewer physical servers, and that less in itself equals less energy consumption.
Renewable Energy Sources
Besides that, the transition to renewable energy resources is the last but not the least important feature of green data centers. Renewables, being solar, wind, hydro, and biomass energy, can stand as the substitute for powering data centers with great zero environmental impact. Renewable energy sources not only reduce greenhouse gases but could also incur high returns in the long run as the costs are normally covered by the initial investments.
Being a data center or not, the choice of a “sustainable” data center has thus become the underlying condition for its prosperity. With sustainability being of great importance to businesses in their search to minimize their negative environmental impact, choosing a data center with sustainability as the priority makes sense. This includes carrying out an assessment of the data centers and their efficiency in using energy, renewable energy, as well as water conservation, and their commitment to lower the emission of carbon dioxide. Moreover, certificate stipulations such as the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) or the Uptime Institute’s Tier Certification are signs of the sustainability measures adopted by the data center.
Measuring the Data Center Sustainability
Different environmental agreements identify a variety of measures of sustainability
Efficient Use of Energy
Data centers need to gauge their energy usage to find out the efficiency of energy consumption. PUE scores compare the use of energy by the technology equipment with the entire energy consumption of the data center. A climate pact identifies that PUE target should be 1.3 for a new data center in a cool environment, whereas in warmer settings it can be 1.4.
Reusable Energy
The sustainability of any data center depends on the reusable energy these facilities use. It is expected that till the year 2030 green data centers should use complete renewable energy resources.
Efficient Use of Water
Water is used in huge amounts for computer cooling purposes. Water may not appear as the resource that is wasted in data center operations, but every year the enormous amount of water is used in data centers for various purposes. As there is a lot of equipment in the data centers overheating can cause server failures. Water conservation and WUE scores focus on the amount of water used by data centers for cooling the equipment. Initially the cooling systems were wasting a lot of water, effective designs of these systems have greatly reduced the water consumption. Loop systems are used where the water is reused and recycled to effectively cool the systems.
Sustainability in Construction
Sustainability does not only count important in operating standards, but is given due importance in the planning and construction stages of development. Renewable and locally available materials should be used.
Use of Long-Lasting Batteries
As batteries are used in various equipments the frequent manufacturing of batteries can have a negative environmental impact. It is suggested to use new technology in battery development that can manufacture long lasting batteries.
Keeping a track of waste and consumption
A proper assessment of sustainability requires a clear number that expresses water and energy use in data centers. In this regard integrated management softwares are required that completely monitor the energy waste. End of life management decision has a huge impact on the environment. The reuse of equipment can greatly reduce the negative impact of the business operations.
Some Important Factors in Sustainable Data Center Design
Technology
Innovative technology advancement can greatly help the businesses reduce their carbon footprint and reuse the energy. Technology needs to enhance its pace to bring the solutions that focus on server cooling only instead of the whole rooms. Partnership with One Union Solutions can provide your company a perspective for adopting advanced technologies in this regard and still meet the compliance standards.
Obtaining Energy
There can be situations when the need of the energy may be more than the energy generated from renewable resources. As the production of such energy is increased the procurement can become more attainable. On site generation of energy can be another option.
Factors of Change in Sustainable Data Centers
Improvement of efficiency on various ends have become a critical driver in change for data center sustainability. In this regard use of mission critical machines also increased the efficiency. Knowledge of proper custom requirements can ensure single time clearances which can save the money and time hence reducing the carbon footprint.
Features of a Sustainable Data Center Partner
Some of the important factors that need to be considered in selecting a sustainable data center partner are WUE Water Use Effectiveness, the Design of the Site, PUE Power Use Effectiveness, Reusable Energy Consumption and Reducing Waste.
Top Data Centers of the World that are Sustainable
Ark: They have developed a water saving technology that reduces the water use by 85%
Scala: They are the first Latin American business that completely used reusable energy. They were also considered carbon neutral in the year 2021
Air Trunk: They are considering a Paris Agreement to align their emission targets with the sustainable practices.
Echelon: They focus on using the heat that is required by the data center and the rest of the waste heat is used to dry the remaining products that in turn help in the production of fertilizer. It uses adjacent dock resource as a way to exchange heat, hence reducing its consumption.
All the businesses need to consider their impact on the environment and work collectively to reduce the climatic catastrophes.
