This article examines the environmental impact of data centers and the industry’s crucial shift from traditional “white space” designs to sustainable green building practices. It explores how renewable energy adoption and eco-friendly materials can reduce both carbon footprints and operational costs while meeting regulatory requirements. The piece underscores that meaningful sustainability requires collective action from all industry stakeholders.
An article by Gordon Johnson, Subzero Senior CFD Manager
The Environmental Cost
As essential as data centers are to our increasingly digital lives, they come at a huge environmental cost to our planet.
It doesn’t help that much of the energy required to power them is still sourced from fossil fuels. It’s one of the reasons that the industry has been identified as a major contributor to climate change.
Given the growing environmental concerns, it is now an urgent necessity to transition to sustainable, renewable energy sources, energy-efficient technologies, and recyclable materials. To impose the importance of net-zero, governments and regulatory bodies worldwide are seeking to implement stricter environmental policies to meet global climate goals.
The adoption of sustainable design ensures adherence to these regulations. Furthermore, as sustainability becomes a crucial component of corporate social responsibility (CSR) for many organizations and more consumers and businesses are favoring companies with strong environmental commitments, a strong sustainability policy can yield a competitive advantage in a tough marketplace.
Transitioning from White to Green
White space, as it relates to data centers, is the space inside a building devoted to IT hardware, such as servers, storage, and networking components. It is a highly controlled environment with restricted access, monitored for temperature, humidity, and other factors critical to maintaining the health of IT systems.
Increasing demand for data center performance and capacity while at the same time reducing operating costs requires an efficient use of white space. What could the transformation from white space to green building offer? And can it still deliver on operational excellence?
Incorporating renewable energy sources and embracing natural power supplies such as wind or solar, enables operational efficiencies to be raised, cooling requirements reduced, and CO2 emissions to be significantly reduced. In addition, construction using recycled and recyclable materials also supports global initiatives in combating climate change, reducing waste, and lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
Green Building Certifications
According to the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, data centers are one of the most energy-intensive building types, consuming 10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building. This energy consumption is only expected to increase due to high intensity emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Global green building certifications, such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), are heralding a new era of environmentally sustainable practices. These certifications set a framework for integrating recycled and recyclable materials with measurable benchmarks for sustainability, energy efficiency and environmental stewardship.
Globally recognized green building certifications and standards that evaluate the environmental impact and performance of buildings are essential in promoting environmentally conscious design in contemporary infrastructure. Internationally recognized indicators give data centers the means to demonstrate their commitment to minimizing environmental impact, and set a bar for best practice in sustainable construction and operation. This encourages industry-wide adoption, opening the door for a more sustainable future.
Balancing Costs and Sustainability
Transitioning to greener materials and practices offers significant environmental benefits, but it also raises questions about cost. Does the investment in recyclable, green materials balance the return on investment?
Upfront costs of adopting green building practices are indeed high, particularly in legacy data centers, but the long-term financial benefits are indisputable. Over time, utilizing energy-efficient designs and systems can lead to a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by reducing power and operational expenses.
Integrating renewables can also decrease organizations’ reliance on fossil fuels, helping them to better manage any future energy challenges. Additionally, data centers that actively pursue net-zero initiatives can enhance their brand perception by complying with regulations, benefiting from a value that is difficult to quantify.
These benefits justify the initial investment. When evaluating costs concerning TCO, the argument for both financial and environmental sustainability is compelling.
The Power of Collective Responsibility
While data centers have an unavoidable influence on the environment, the industry is quickly establishing itself as a leader in environmental sustainability by implementing a variety of net-zero strategies. However, all industry stakeholders need to play a role in the collective accountability for an environmentally friendly future.
Partnerships are integral to this collaborative approach. From operators adopting renewable energy sources to designers innovating with eco-friendly materials, investors funding sustainability projects to policymakers incentivizing green practices; we are all answerable in the acceleration of sustainable operation.
Setting an Example
Taking decisive action is the first step to sustainability. The choice of being a sustainability leader yields benefits beyond the environment; it brings about a positive change chain reaction, a ripple effect across all industries. Positive transformation inspires and influences all sectors and markets. Adopting this role of responsibility leverages a legacy of accountability and investment in sustainability, with the long-lasting positive impact on the globe to be enjoyed by the next-generation of technology entrepreneurs.
About the writer
Gordon Johnson is the Senior CFD Engineer at Subzero Engineering and is responsible for planning and managing all CFD related jobs in the U.S. and worldwide. He has over 35 years of experience in the data center and cleanroom industry which includes data center energy efficiency assessments, data center design, CFD modeling for both cleanrooms and data centers, and disaster recovery. He is a certified U.S. Department of Energy Data Center Energy Practitioner (DCEP), a certified Data Centre Design Professional (CDCDP), and holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology. Gordon also brings his knowledge and ability to teach the fundamentals of cleanroom and data center design and energy efficiency to numerous public speaking events annually, white papers, and industry leading researched articles worldwide.