SUSTAINABILITY

HIGH EFFICIENCY

High-efficiency cooling technologies like Green Loop Cooling can help improve the sustainability of data centers in several key ways:

Reduce energy use – More efficient cooling systems such as rear-door heat exchangers, immersion cooling, etc. allow data centers to operate at higher temperatures while using less energy. This results in lower carbon emissions.
Reuse waste heat – Innovative cooling methods make it easier to capture and reuse waste heat from servers for heating buildings or driving absorption chillers. This reduces wasted energy.
Lower water usage – Technologies like air cooling and liquid cooling optimize water utilization compared to traditional computer room air conditioning. This conserves water.
Enable free cooling – High-efficiency cooling extends the number of hours per year that free cooling methods like evaporative cooling or outside air cooling can be used. Relying more on free cooling reduces electricity usage.
Higher server densities – Efficient cooling facilitates higher rack densities and more servers per square foot. This means smaller overall data center footprints reducing construction materials and land usage.
Modular scalability – Innovative cooling architectures allow capacity to be added modularly as needed. This prevents over-building and stranded capacity which wastes energy.
Improved PUE – The combination of energy savings, heat recovery and free cooling opportunities lowers the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) by optimizing cooling and infrastructure overheads.
Operational savings – High-efficiency cooling reduces maintenance needs and extends equipment lifetimes compared to traditional cooling. This saves resources over the operating life.

Overall, purpose-built cooling solutions enable data centers to minimize resource consumption, reduce negative environmental impact, and improve the total cost of ownership. Sustainable cooling is key for green data centers.

CARBON NEUTRALITY

Advanced and efficient cooling can significantly help data centers achieve carbon neutrality by multiple method:

Reduce energy consumption – More efficient cooling reduces the overall energy footprint of the data center. This directly decreases carbon emissions from lower electricity use.
Lower PUE – Improved cooling efficiency lowers the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), which measures how much energy is used by non-IT equipment. Lower PUE means less wasted energy and carbon emissions.
Increase waste heat reuse – Efficient cooling generates more usable waste heat from servers that can be repurposed for heating. Reusing this waste heat offsets carbon from traditional heating sources.
Enable free cooling – Innovative methods like evaporative cooling and outside air cooling extend the use of free cooling. Relying more on free cooling minimizes the need for mechanical refrigeration, which requires electricity.
Optimize setpoints – Precise cooling control allows higher temperature and humidity setpoints without sacrificing safety. Running at higher setpoints reduces energy consumption.
Support higher density – Efficient cooling accommodates higher server densities. This allows more computing capacity per square foot, reducing the overall facility footprint and embodied carbon.
Reduce water usage – Methods like air cooling and liquid cooling optimize water use versus traditional computer room air conditioning. Lower water needs cut the energy used for water pumping and treatment.

Overall, advanced cooling technologies are critical enablers for data centers to achieve zero-carbon or carbon-neutral operations in the future. Cooling optimization is a key piece of the sustainability puzzle.

HEAT REUSE

Data centers generate a significant amount of waste heat from the large number of servers and other IT equipment operating inside. This waste heat must be removed to keep the equipment from overheating. Traditional data center cooling systems use chillers and cooling towers to reject this heat into the outside air. However, there is an opportunity to reuse this waste heat rather than just discarding it.

Some ways data centers can reuse server waste heat include:

District heating – The waste heat can be piped to nearby buildings to provide space heating or domestic hot water heating. This allows the data center to act like a cogeneration plant.
Absorption chillers – Waste heat can drive absorption chillers to provide chilled water for cooling needs inside the data center itself or nearby buildings. This reduces the need to mechanical chilling.
Desiccant dehumidification – Waste heat can regenerate desiccant wheels to provide dry air for controlling humidity in the data center.
HVAC heating – During colder months, waste heat can directly provide heating for the data center’s HVAC system via hot water or steam loops.
Greenhouses – a great and environmentally friendly way to implement the re-use of data center heat to nearby greenhouses and to support plant growth.

The feasibility of these applications depends on the data center location and proximity to other facilities that can utilize the waste heat. Overall, reusing server heat reduces the data center’s utility footprint and improves sustainability. Data center designers are increasingly looking at waste heat reuse as an integral part of the cooling strategy.

REGULATORY COMPLIANCE

Many countries have implemented regulations and policies around data center sustainability and energy efficiency:

European Union – The EU Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency provides voluntary standards and best practices. Some regulations also target greenhouse gas emissions.
United Kingdom – The UK was the first G20 country to set a net-zero emissions target by 2050 into law. This influences data center efficiency.
Germany – Germany has strict regulations on data center energy use and recycling. For example, the Blue Angel sets sustainability requirements for facilities.
France – France regulates data center water usage and requires reporting of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). New data centers must achieve a PUE below 1.5.
Netherlands – The Netherlands has guidelines for data center emissions, and a target to reduce data center energy use by 15% by 2030.
Japan – Japan enacted a Data Center Environmental Performance Standard focusing on efficiency. Tokyo requires PUE reporting and targets under 1.4.
China – China regulates data center power usage, emissions, and water usage, such as limits on hours of water cooling system operation.
United States – There are no nationwide federal regulations, but some states like California have set efficiency standards for data centers. Many data centers voluntarily follow EPA ENERGY STAR guidelines.
Australia – Australia set a national PUE target of 1.5 by 2020 and requires cloud and data center operators to disclose energy information.

So while specific regulations vary, sustainability is increasingly factoring into data center oversight worldwide. Many countries now have efficiency standards or targets in place.