As the economy of every country depends on the data centers, they need to focus on their sustainable approaches. The blog will aim to highlight the importance of sustainability and what factors a business needs to consider when choosing a data center. Water consumption and energy usage are some important factors along with the focus on green data centers. The blog will identify how choosing a specific data center will impact the planet.
As more businesses need technology for their operations, the need for data storage also increases. This consequently increases the need for more data centers. Data centers are becoming bigger and their energy consumption is also increasing day by day. The ICT sectors are becoming huge that causes 2 percent of the global greenhouse gases, which is equal to the global airline industry. Data centers are now becoming huge consumers of energy in US, but environmental pacts are pressurizing the businesses to reduce their environmental impact and energy usage.
Data Center Sustainability
Sustainability of data centers aims to reduce the impact of their practices on the environment. The sustainability factors focus on reuse of energy resources and their efficient consumption. The basic idea behind the sustainable data centers is reducing the carbon emissions to zero.
Requirements of Green Data Center
There are a number of factors that make a data center green. Focusing on one aspect of sustainability is not sufficient, the data centers must focus on the overall sustainable approach to reduce the carbon footprint of the businesses. These data centers consider conservation of water and energy along with renewable energy resources.
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.
