ENERGY CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE Y


ou’d expect most sectors that rely on technology to be able to buck the economic downturn in some way. It’s evident in the way we use personal


technology – sales of smartphones went up 70 per cent in the year to January 2010. And it’s evident in the big things, like datacentres.


Datacentres are an essential part of the modern technological landscape. They are the facilities used to house computer systems and associated components including telecommunications and storage systems. According to Jones Lang LaSalle’s latest Datacentre Barometer report, over half of those surveyed claimed that occupier demand was rising at a rate greater than the increase in supply of sites for datacentre development to meet consumer demand. The survey also reports that some financial institutions are looking to buying pieces of land on which to build new datacentres. One factor that they must inevitably address when they come to develop the new facilities will be their energy consumption which can be very high indeed. This is partly down to the technology itself but also down to the building systems needed to maintain an optimum environment for them to work in. So, while volatile energy prices have been felt across the whole range of building types in recent years, it is the now ubiquitous datacentre that has arguably been the hardest hit. These cost increases are driving managers to revisit the way datacentres are managed, closely linked with the ethical desire to manage the centres in a more environmentally friendly way. As usual, the bottom line and the


Lee Kilminster Customer Marketing Manager – Purchasing & Electronics, RS Components.


environment are inextricably linked. It is estimated by Greenpeace that energy consumption in datacentres will triple by 2020 as a result of their proliferation and that this extra consumption must be mitigated to reduce their environmental impact. What is beyond doubt is that this growth in energy use is based primarily on the increased use of datacentres. Overall, the IT industry accounts for around 2 per cent of global carbon output, roughly equivalent to the aviation industry, but the use of large datacentres coupled with other efficiencies is painting a complex picture of how the sector will develop.


As well as price and the organisation’s own environmental objectives, the sector has become the focus for an increasing amount of legislation and new standards. The Building Research Establishment (BRE) is one of the most important drivers of change in this area and has recently updated the BREEAM Data Centres 2008 scheme and developed it further to take into account two important features of these building types that it felt it had not addressed properly, namely their relatively low occupancy levels and their very high energy consumption. The BREEAM weighting system has been adjusted to take account of these two key characteristics of datacentres and their social and environmental impact. It has introduced a new credit system based on a measure of the power usage effectiveness rating (PUE), to reflect the efficiency of the plant to service technology. PUE is the


measurement of total energy used divided by IT energy consumption and its use as the key metric for datacentres was established earlier in the year following an international agreement.


The BRE has announced that it believes the typical PUE for current datacentres is around 2.2, while the best achievable PUE rating currently achievable is around 1.2.


The most energy intensive part of a datacentre’s operation is invariably the cooling of servers. This is not only important in terms of the energy used to cool


54| SUSTAINABLE FM | DECEMBER 2010/JANUARY 2011


equipment but also the consumption of water as part of the cooling system, and especially drinking water. However this is only needed for those buildings which are seeking a rating of ‘outstanding’, although the new standard does give some credit if heat from the cooling process is reused. Meanwhile, there is no sign that the demand for datacentres will abate any time soon. Indeed the growth in new technologies is driving demand for more and more of these buildings. The success of the iPad has focussed attention on one particular feature of modern datacentres, that of cloud computing, a system where information and processes are accessed through a network rather than a local server. Google operates on the same basis and the UK government has its own cloud computing strategy. Cloud computing is attractive because it offers centralised resources and delivers cost savings and other efficiencies related to economies of scale.


The issue became the subject of a Greenpeace report in April which welcomed the cost and energy savings associated with the new generation of datacentres but which questioned whether the benefits were all that were claimed when the energy sources were from unsustainable fuels. The report does draw attention to many positive developments in the industry, not least successful energy sourcing cases. The report ends by pushing the leading lights of the IT industry, the likes of Facebook and Google, to press for greater use of sustainable energy sources to gain the full benefits of the new efficiencies. At around the same time as the Greenpeace report appeared, it was announced that organisations from Europe, the US and Japan have reached a global accord on the measurement of energy efficiency, giving datacentre operators a better understanding of how to improve efficiency at their own sites. The proposals were put forward at a meeting in February to discuss rising energy consumption at datacentres. The meeting was attended by experts from the US Department of Energy; the US Environmental Protection Agency; the European Commission; Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry; Japan’s


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