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Industry leaders are calling for more “stringent” environmental impact metrics of data centres as demand for the asset class continues to grow.
While power usage efficiency (PUE) is traditionally used to measure data centre sustainability, the standalone benchmark fails to capture the asset’s full environmental impact, according to a new report by Cushman & Wakefield.
The report acknowledged that the industry has made significant improvements to PUE over recent years, with the industry average falling from around 2.5 in 2007 to 1.5 today.
But Vivek Dahiya, the managing director for data centres and new initiatives India at Cushman & Wakefield, pointed out that the limitations of measuring power alone have become “increasingly clear” as the industry evolves.
He pointed out that PUE — which is calculated by dividing the facility’s total power by the energy used by IT equipment — can be an ineffective indicator of energy efficiency as it does not account for the climate within the area the data centres are built.
“Achieving a lower PUE is very dependent on the geography and climate of a data centre’s location. It is easy to achieve in the upper parts of the northern hemisphere but very difficult close to the equator where more power is required for cooling,” he explained.
To address this blindspot, the report called for water consumption and carbon emissions to be measured in addition to power usage to form a new “trinity” of measurement standards that will help minimise the environmental footprint of data centres.
According to the report, tracking a data centre’s PUE, along with its water usage efficiency (WUE) and carbon usage effectiveness (CUE), will provide a more holistic overview of a data centre’s environmental impact.
Carbon usage effectiveness (CUE) measures the carbon emissions from a data centre, while water usage efficiency (WUE) tracks how much water is used for cooling and other operational needs.
Cushman & Wakefield co-head of sustainability services, Greater China, Alton Wong said that while some data centre operators were aware of the CUE and WUE metrics, few had taken the initiative to adopt them.
But with more sectors choosing to go digital, Mr Wong said that an industry-wide adoption of the trinity is “a step in the right direction”.
“For as long as we see increasing digitisation of everything from banking to manufacturing to communications and media the demand for data centres will only grow. The only way to future-proof the sector is to ensure regulatory standards keep pace,” he stated.
Mr Dahiya acknowledged that data centre investors, operators and occupiers have respective environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ambitions.
“The challenge for the industry now is to continually improve the baseline standard to ensure that all requirements can be accommodated under one roof. A colocation data centre is only as sustainable as its least sustainable client,” he remarked.
As companies set more “ambitious” ESG goals, Mr Wong claimed that adopting the “trinity” is a practical way to hit these targets.
“The first step to reducing carbon emissions is to measure them. The trinity of measuring carbon, water and power can provide a much more informed baseline from which improvements can be made,” he explained.
“At the end of the day, sustainability is not just about one metric, it is about improving the impact that data centres have on the environment overall.”
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