The Sustainability Ebook: A Holistic Approach

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SUSTAINABILITY A HOLISTIC APPROACH

Reducing environmental impact across the entire data center lifecycle

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>>INTRODUCTION

From nice to have to necessity, improving sustainability efforts in data centers has rapidly ascended the corporate agenda to the point where 80 percent of surveyed organizations cite sustainable best practices as, ‘highly important’ in terms of attracting clients and winning business.

This makes it essential to figure out what sustainable best practices look like in order to create standardized, scalable solutions needed to future-ready our industry. In a notoriously secretive and siloed sector, where one size doesn’t fit all, how do we go about achieving our collective ESG goals?

The answer lies not in competition but collaboration. Sharing information and ideas with peers to create the transparency needed to help bolster carbon reductions across the entire data center lifecycle.

From construction to operations, all the way through to decommissioning, this eBook examines three key pillars of the data center journey, where we share some of the ideas, stories, and trailblazers inspiring our industry to do better ‒ at every stage of the process.

PART ONE CONSTRUCTION

Reducing the environmental impact of data centers starts with construction, baking in best practices from the drafting table. From choosing the optimum location for a new data center to the reduction of embedded carbon in building materials and intelligent sourcing, this chapter looks at how data center construction is becoming more sustainable before a drop of concrete is even poured.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: NEW DATA CENTER LOCATIONS

Location is key when it comes to data center development. Tax breaks remain a powerful incentive in choosing one’s location, along with the availability of fiber and electricity ‒ preferably renewable power sources.

There’s another factor to consider— data centers don’t exist in isolation. They have needs for services like water and cooling which other neighboring industrial sites may also require. Placing a facility near certain kinds of infrastructure is often a win-win

situation. Some of these sites are exotic, while some are simply practical.

Natural gas plants

Data centers need consistent cooling to operate, which can require a significant power draw. But at the same time, one place where a huge source of cooling currently goes to waste is at liquified natural gas (LNG) plants.

Natural gas is shipped in tankers, compressed and cooled into liquid form. When the gas is landed, it must be

vaporized and fed into pipelines. That re-gasification process requires heat energy potentially making LNG plants good partners: a data center’s waste heat energy could pass to the plant, benefiting both.

The idea was proposed by TeraCool several years ago. In 2014, Bob Shatten, president of TeraCool, told DCD: “We think there is a tremendous opportunity. We have had interest from some LNG terminals – now we need to get the data center world to step outside of the box

Built near a complementary industry, a data center can go from a liability to an environmental asset

and align their interests at one of these locations.”

As well as cooling, the expansion process creates mechanical energy, which can drive turbines and generate electricity ‒ so the process could also power the data center with renewable energy.

The drawback is that LNG plants are generally placed far from populated areas because of the danger of fire. Downtime resulting from recent data center fires might dissuade developers from this option.

Sewage plants

Not everyone would want to live and work in a sewage plant, but California-

based Tomorrow Water thinks data centers may fit in perfectly.

“Data centers need space, they need to cool, and they need water,” Jon Liberzon, vice president at Tomorrow Water, told DCD. “At a wastewater treatment plant, there [is] tons of water available for free. There’s no question of the security of supply.”

The synergy is even better, Liberzon explained. Sewage plants, or wastewater recovery facilities (WWRFs), have free space available and use processes that could help cool data centers.

Most WWRFs are long-established sites in densely populated areas. You might think they would lack the physical space for a data center, but new methods of

water treatment are creating space. Much of the land area in traditional WWRFs is historically for sedimentation tanks. Tomorrow Water wants to replace these with biofiltration systems that take up 80 percent less space. In 2017, the company’s Korean parent organization rolled out the technology in a flagship project in Jungnang, Seoul, using the reclaimed space for a new park and a Sewage Museum.

The company’s planned Tomorrow Water Project would partly fund those WWRF upgrades with data center partners ‒ who get land, water and cooling, along with renewable energy from methane produced on-site.

Data center waste heat helps speed

Tomorrow Water

up biological treatment processes at WWRFs by drying sludge and improving reaction rates in digesters producing methane from organic matter. The data center could also be used to run AI services to increase the efficiency of the overall project. The idea is most attractive where space and water are at a premium, either due to limited land, infrastructure capabilities or budget restrictions.

While these ambitious prototypes are exciting, the idea of locating data centers at sewage plants isn’t new. Microsoft proposed the concept more than 10 years ago and then built a prototype data plant at the Dry Creek water treatment center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, which opened in 2015. The plant uses fuel cells to produce energy from the site’s waste methane. .

Biofuel

Several projects have also attempted to marry data centers to biofuels.

Biofuels are renewable and can provide continuous power, unlike wind and solar. It’s important to note that success for these types of projects have varied.

In 2012, Infinity SDC placed a 500kW data center on a business park at Rendlesham in rural Suffolk, United Kingdom, with plans to expand to 4.5MW, all of which could be provided from a bio-digester fed by agriculture waste from nearby vegetable farms.

The site had access to 27.5 tons of agricultural waste a day and alongside methane, it produced fertilizer as a byproduct.

At the time, Infinity’s Nigel Stevens told DCD, “We certainly have some

prospects. We have an incredible diversity of power and resilience” Sadly, the site was 100 miles from London, and Infinity found that businesses at that time preferred to keep their servers in easy reach, so the experiment lapsed.

One site which has made it work is the EcoDataCenter in Falun, Sweden. The facility is close to a combined heat and power (CHP) plant, which burns waste wood and makes wood pellets for heating across Sweden.

As well as using the renewable power from the CHP plant, EcoDataCenter sends up to 10MW of waste heat back, where it is used to dry pellets for burning and export.

This helps the plant produce pellets all year round without needing more energy to dry them. “With a data center nearby, we can prolong the season,” Falu Energi’s sustainable development engineer Lars Runevad told DCD in 2019. “We can produce more wood pellets than otherwise. We may also be able to [stop] the propane excess needed to top it up.”.

Housing

As well as these more exotic data center locales, there’s also a significant opportunity in developing facilities

alongside the most basic type of buildings – housing.

Here is the idea: Data centers in cities can give (or sell) their waste heat to warm up surrounding homes and office buildings. The energy used in the data center gets used twice and the city can reduce or turn off some fossil fuelpowered heating.

The concept has taken off slowly. It’s seeing some adoption in countries like Denmark and Sweden, which require heating for many months out of the year and often offer government-installed district heating systems. Norway’s government has proposed that all data centers with a capacity of more than 2MW should offer their heat to district heating, while the German government is pushing for a similar law

The European Union approves of the idea. Its environmental rules require large fossil fuel-powered industrial plants to explore connecting to district heating systems. This does not apply to data centers because they run on electricity ‒ and can theoretically adopt renewable supplies.

Despite this, European data center operators pledged in 2021 to at least explore options for heat reuse. The Climate Neutral Data Center Pact , that all operators should at least explore the options for heat reuse.

Currently, most data center waste heat is low quality, in the form of warm air at 30°C to 40°C. This is hard to transport and use. In the future, if liquid cooling comes into play, then the thermodynamics changes the economics. Water can carry heat further than air and is what most district heating systems rely on. 

Finding the space for data centers presents a challenge since they are most needed in major metropolitan areas where land is limited or in areas where necessary infrastructure is lacking

- JON LIBERZON, TOMORROW WATER

DATA CENTERS REQUIRE MORE SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION

There’s no shortage of sustainable activity in the data center space. Hyperscalers and other large companies have made carbon reduction commitments along with significant investments in sourcing renewable energy for their facilities. Currently, much of the conversation still focuses on operational sustainability and trying to find ways for facilities to reduce energy use, use renewable energy when possible, and have minimal carbon impact on the local area through district heating initiatives and natural cooling.

This raises the question if enough attention is given to the environmental impact of data center construction, including the materials used. As the sustainability gains from operational efficiencies levelling out, firms must look to reducing embodied carbon in the construction phase to meet longterm carbon reduction goals.

“Until now, the modern green building movement has largely focused on reducing operational energy – the energy used to heat, cool, and power buildings – which is easy to see and measure,” Stacy Smedley, chair

and executive director of Building Transparency, tells DCD. “While this effort has produced many successes, it’s not enough.”

Embodied carbon is the sum of all the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from the mining, harvesting, processing, manufacturing, transportation, and installation of building materials, which is a major source of emissions globally. This represents 11 percent of GHGs

Cement and steel are some of the most carbon-intensive construction

Sustainability gains through energy efficiency will eventually plateau, but there’s much work to be done around the carbon footprint of building materials

materials and; two materials many buildings – including data centers –use in abundance. On average, a ton of cement will produce 1.25 tons of CO2 , largely from the roasted limestone and silica. As a result, buildings and the construction industry generated 37 percent of energy- and process-related CO2 emissions and 34 percent of energy demand in 2021.

The lifecycle assessment of embodied carbon in a building is significant . While Building Transparency says embodied carbon makes up half of a building’s total carbon emissions, data centers are essentially energy-intensive powered shells, which changes the equation slightly.

Both the size and ever-increasing number of data centers make this a topic that can’t be avoided just because there may be more savings in operations. The focus on embodied carbon will be even more critical as more renewable energy sources are eventually deployed in data centers as that will help to further reach carbon reduction goals.

Data center construction considerations that impact sustainability often revolve around the potential operational impact. Topics like: how to cool the servers in the most energy efficient way, what to do with excess heat IT hardware generates, whether the facility uses renewable power, or if there are more sustainable options for backup than diesel generators.

These are important considerations, but as IT hardware continues to evolve and become more efficient, and energy grids rely more on renewable energy, the sustainability gains and carbon reduction companies are looking to make will be harder to come by through operational efficiencies alone.

“As we start to reduce our operational emissions and the energy grid starts

For some of these large data center owners that are already purchasing 100 percent green energy for some of their markets and projects, they’ll already view themselves as carbon neutral on the energy side, and for those owners, the embodied carbon emissions are really what’s

the energy side, and for those owners, the embodied carbon emissions are really what’s left to tackle.”

Data centers are often standardized in their construction also means once lowcarbon practices and standards have been established at one facility it should be easy to replicate across future facilities without too much heavy lift.

Slow progress in CO2 reduction

to get cleaner, emissions of the materials that we’re building with on our construction projects become a larger source of emissions,” says Smedley.

“For some of these large data center owners that are already purchasing 100 percent green energy for some of their markets and projects, they’ll already view themselves as carbon neutral on

Concrete often accounts for as much as 40 percent of a data center’s construction, followed by fuel (25 percent) and then steel, which can account for 20 percent of a project’s carbon footprint, Michael Riordan, managing director of Linesight UK, tells DCD. He adds that adopting lowcarbon approaches to new builds can result in 13 percent less carbon during construction.

The Global Cement and Concrete Association has committed to zero emissions for concrete by 2050. While there will be no silver bullet to reach that goal, there are a number of startups and trends in the materials space looking to reduce the carbon impact of this core building material.

left to tackle

- STACY SMEDLEY, BUILDING TRANSPARENCY

Several architecture and design firms tell DCD that broadly we are still very early in the conversation around embodied carbon. Still, progress is being made slowly as awareness of the issues increases.

Some clients that engage their sustainability teams early in the design process, says Todd Boucher, principal & founder, Leading Edge Design Group (LEDG), “and in other cases where the construction is more driven from that mission-critical sort of viewpoint, we find ourselves trying to weave in the sustainability discussion around how we could help improve the net environmental impact without an impact on reliability. But I don’t think the conversation has extended far beyond efficiency into embedded carbon and sustainability.”

Other sustainable construction materials have surfaced as well , from eco bricks to those made from water bottles. Just because data centers could be built, or even 3D printed, from such novel materials doesn’t mean firms will be willing to take the financial or resiliency risks to use them in construction.

“Owners adopt low-risk mindsets,” says LEDG’s Boucher. “If materials may not be proven enough yet, it would be a

challenge to implement them in a data center environment that has any form of mission criticality.”

This low-risk mindset also means resilience and redundancy are higher on the list of priorities than sustainability. However, as companies move towards fewer centralized facilities and more Edge data centers and availability zones, the environmental impact per site lowers. This creates more opportunities to introduce more sustainable thinking into smaller sites.

Data and benchmarks are needed for sustainable construction

While there are standards and certifications for sustainability in buildings – like Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification system from the US Green Buildings Council (USGBC) and the Green Building Council of Australia’s Green Star Building rating tool – they often focus on a building’s entire lifecycle.

Measuring and tracking embodied carbon and the environmental impact of construction and building materials can be difficult, so creating effective benchmarks from which to measure

yourself and others against, and start to make a change, hasn’t historically been easy for companies.

Several projects and lifecycle tools are available to better measure, understand, and reduce the embodied carbon of construction projects. For example, the EU-funded BAMB project is working on Materials Passports that can help organizations understand the provenance of materials and become more comfortable choosing recycled materials.

it’s important that data center firms, especially the hyperscalers, take an interest in reducing their embodied carbon footprint due to the sheer number of facilities they run, both data center and otherwise.

Likewise, while enterprise data centers may be smaller in number and size than hyperscalers and colo providers, those companies often have large commercial real estate footprints they can transfer sustainable thinking to and from.

The carrot and the stick

While the hyperscalers and largest companies are already committing to carbon reducing pledges, financial incentives – whether carrot or stick –

CarbonCure

from government and investors might be required to get smaller firms and those more focused on returns to come on board.

“Ultimately, I believe the only driver is a financial one,” says Brewin of Reid Brewin Architects. “Consideration and effort to reduce the carbon impact of data center construction occur within the limits of local regulations and occasional certification requirements. Anything more is for political gain or extremely limited, and the only way to encourage sustainable thinking is to make regulatory changes.”

In terms of sticks, numerous carbon cap regulations are coming from the EU, and New York City also has new carbon cap regulations on the books.

At the same time, some investors are beginning to require carbon reporting from firms they invest in.

“There’s a big ESG [environmental, social, and corporate governance] push in investment money and a lot of laws that are coming out that are putting carbon caps on what you can emit,” says Rob Ioanna, principal at Syska Hennessy. “Those two trends of money putting pressure on companies and combining government incentives or pushes will probably do some good.”

Meanwhile, Building Transparency’s Stacy Smedley tells DCD that the financial incentive carrot is already there, as less carbon-intensive materials are often cheaper because they have lower manufacturing and processing costs.

“This is coming as policy. It might not be tomorrow, but it might be three years from now. You might as well get your feet wet and just understand what that means before it is potentially a mandatory thing.” She advises firms to get ahead of the game before it becomes a regulatory requirement.

“Every step that we can take, however incremental, is important,” says LEDG’s Boucher. “If, as an industry, we’re ignoring the impacts of that construction piece, then I think we’re really doing a disservice in our commitment to sustainability.”

Education and transparency are key

Everyone DCD spoke to said one of the most important things any firm in the data center industry can do to encourage more sustainable thinking in the construction phase is to educate and engage with stakeholders on the topic.

Design, engineering, construction, procurement, and sustainability teams should all be asking each other how to make these facilities more sustainable. At the same time, firms need to be open to sharing what they’ve learned.

“Every company has a responsibility,” adds Buckland of JB Associates. “Anyone working in the data center world needs to be sending the message out how they’re trying to reduce their carbon footprint. They should share those initiatives ideas, it’s not something that any company should keep as their little black book.” 

The conversation is starting to turn to embodied carbon because that’s really going to be where we’re going to have emissions reductions

- ROB IOANNA, SYSKA HENNESSY

PART TWO OPERATIONS

In a mission-critical environment like a data center, downtime is simply not an option. As is commonly known, temperature management accounts for the largest portion of a data center’s wasted energy, so in this chapter we are focusing on improving data center efficiency in terms of power, cooling, and water.

We will showcase some of the operational ideas from the industry and learn that by staying in control, we can maximize uptime while achieving more sustainable operations.

STAYING IN CONTROL TO DEFEAT DATA CENTER DOWNTIME

As discussed, data center owners and facility managers are left with a complex puzzle – how to cater to growing demand, while at the same time lowering energy usage and eliminating downtime. Working to solve this problem often has the additional benefit of reducing overhead and protecting bottom-line performance.

Data center owners and facility managers are left with a complex puzzle

Meeting the energy needs Server consolidation can help reduce

data center energy use as the core IT typically uses the most energy, but the building itself also plays a significant role in energy management. It is therefore advisable to investigate some simple structural steps that could help reduce energy consumption. For example, condition-based maintenance (CBM) can help optimize the operation of ventilation systems, air handling units and chillers by using machine learning.

“Upgrades to existing systems can help deliver valuable savings, yet the biggest improvements often come from integrating a site’s management

control systems,” says Alpesh Saraiya, data center offering leader at Honeywell.

By better monitoring and controlling building services, facilities managers can leverage modern advances in building management technology. Although this may seem complex, it’s likely that many of the core elements will already be in place.

Minimizing downtime

Downtime is still an issue for many data center operators. The Uptime Institute’s 2022 Data Center Resiliency Survey found 80 percent of surveyed

If it’s monitored, it can be managed – striking the careful balance of safety, resiliency, and efficiency

data center managers and operators experienced some type of outage in the past three years. So how can facilities maintain uptime and business continuity?

“A full-featured building management installation often provides a single point of control, delivering clear information, communication and data processing for more reliable building automation and supervision,” says Saraiya. “Also, gaining insights into a system’s performance capabilities typically makes it increasingly possible to identify efficiencies and reduce potential outages as well as optimize security, fire and safety procedures.”

Safeguarding against attacks

Due to the immense value and commercial sensitivity associated with the data stored and transferred, data centers must have a strategy to reduce the risks of cyberattacks. Aside from the reputational damage a facility might face after a breach, the cost implications can be vast. According to data from the Uptime Institute, 60 percent of failures result in at least $100,000 in total losses

Facility managers also need to take a proactive approach to the physical

safety and security of data centers. Multi-layer security, combined with advanced gas, smoke, and early lithium-ion battery off-gas detection technology, alongside CCTV and the ability to manage critical incidents via an integrated command and control suite (CCS), is essential.

“The ability to manage alarms from integrated security and life safety systems on a single platform coupled with rapid response mechanisms can help minimize the effects of a system going down due to an event,” adds Saraiya.

Prepare for growth

As the data center industry continues to evolve, integrating new systems into existing facilities can be difficult. Fortunately, as far as energy saving is concerned, a reduction can often be achieved with relatively simple tweaks.

As expected, working on new build projects can be easier as it enables the implementation of selected best practices from the start. Key corporate and social responsibility goals can often be implemented at the design stage, such as low-impact service, enhanced environmental credibility, and a scalable infrastructure that can support future growth.

Today’s data centers need to be safer and more secure for both their assets and employees, more resilient against unscheduled downtime to support business continuity, and capable of optimizing operational efficiencies and energy management.

To further desired outcomes, the data center industry needs to work closely with specialist companies that have a track record of providing the products and services needed to deliver optimal results, now and in the future. 

Gaining insights into a system’s performance capabilities typically makes it increasingly possible to identify efficiencies and reduce potential outages as well as optimize security, fire, and safety procedures

- ALPESH SARAIYA, HONEYWELL

WHY DATA CENTERS NEED TO TALK ABOUT WATER

In 2021, it was revealed that some hyperscale data centers in the North of Holland used more water than they predicted they would. In the same year, other hyperscalers also under predicted their water use.

This made headlines in Dutch newspapers ‒ unsurprisingly, given the country was at the time suffering a drought DCD reported the story, as part of its ongoing coverage of the increasing concern over data center water usage around the world.

Being clear about water

That year, hyperscale data centers in fact used a small amount of the total water usage in the Netherlands, the Dutch Data Center Association told DCD. “While the data centers of North Holland consumed 550 million liters of water between them, the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics, (CBS) put this at 0.075 percent of the country’s total water consumption. The biggest users of water are households (35 percent) and agriculture (11 percent),” DDCA MD Stijn Grove said.

DCD’s original article mentioned the fact that data centers use less water than other sectors. Still, the story here is the data center sector reports varying or confusing figures.

Secondly, the amount of cooling required will grow higher due to the rising levels of heat the world is experiencing. Data centers often start to use water to supplement outside air cooling when the temperature climbs above 25°C.

Transparency in data center water

Data centers are part of the water economy.

usage needs improvement. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory research scientist, Dr. Arman Shehabi, is best known in the data center world for getting the first truly reliable figures for energy usage out of the US data centers. He found that water usage data is much less reliable.

In 2021, he led a team that published research on the water use of US data centers and told DCD: “I never thought it could be worse transparency than on the energy side, but we actually know less.”

Their best guess was that data centers used 7.1 cubic meters of water for every 1MWh (or 7.1 liters per kWh) of data center energy consumption but cautioned that there would be a considerable variation within that figure.

Dr. Shehabi also points out that roughly three-quarters of that figure was indirect consumption associated with electricity generation. The LBNL report estimated that US data centers’ direct on-site water consumption is around 1.8 liters of water per kWh. This may be a high estimate, as the value assumes that all the cooling uses water and may be lower in data centers that include other forms of cooling like air-side economizers.

Less thirsty in Europe?

Earlier this year, the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact set targets for water use amounting to 400ml of water per kWh of data center power. This is lower than Dr. Shehabi’s estimate but is likely mostly due to the increased use of airside economizers.

The Pact is notable given the industry group is setting targets for the sector as an alternative to top-down regulations imposed by the European Union.

Hyperscalers have projects and pilots in motion to further reduce their water use including some with goals to be water positive.

A responsibility toward transparency

The world is in a climate emergency, with drought now a recurring problem in multiple regions around the world. Under these conditions, everyone is a legitimate target for media scrutiny, and everyone has a responsibility to be transparent.

The data center industry has a lot that it rightly wants to talk about ‒water storage initiatives, renewable energy purchases, and more. These topics can’t be discussed in a vacuum without disclosing the real-world impact data center infrastructure has on the planet. 

MAKING SUSTAINABILITY A BUSINESS ADVANTAGE

PART THREE DECOMMISSIONING

We’ve covered construction and operations, but what happens when a data center or the equipment within it reaches the end of its useful life? Is there life after the proverbial data center death?

With e-waste a global issue, incorrectly disposing of aging equipment can easily place an organization back to sustainable square one. Circular thinking must be applied throughout the entire data center lifecycle.

In this chapter, we examine what happens during data center decommissioning and what sustainability best practice at end-of-life really looks like.

RE-USE, REFURBISH, RECYCLE

Circular economy thinking with data center assets

As we’ve discussed, reaching carbon goals means looking across the full lifecycle of a data center’s operations – from procuring renewable energy, updating building management strategies, to connecting to district heating schemes. It also means addressing the IT hardware asset lifecycle.

According to the latest Global E-Waste Monitor report, the world generated 53.6 million metric tons (Mt) in 2019 e-waste and only 17.4 percent of this was officially documented as properly collected and recycled.

Much of this equipment was likely consumer-grade devices, where environmental groups are demanding that devices be made repairable to prolong their lives, but the role of enterprise IT hardware in data centers should be addressed with equal urgency.

According to SuperMicro’s 2021 Data Centers & The Environment study, 26

percent of surveyed companies don’t fully recycle their IT assets.

Research by Service Express suggests hardware failure rates remain less than 0.5 percent, even over a 10-15 year lifespan, suggesting companies that refreshed hardware after more than the customary three to five years could get a much longer usable lifespan if they were willing to compromise slightly on having the latest and greatest machines.

It is true that hardware refresh cycles are getting longer – an average of five-year cycle in 2020, up from three in 2015, partly driven by the fact that chip performance and efficiency are not increasing as fast.

Unfortunately, given the ownership models of public cloud and as-aservice hardware sustainability choices are increasingly being taken out of customers’ hands and onto the agendas of hyperscalers and OEMs.

Hyperscalers think circularly

The move to the cloud means that hyperscale players are forced to consider the whole lifecycle of their servers. These players are now hardware owners on a massive global scale, and this compels them to derive as much value as possible from their investments.

Many large hyperscalers and technology companies are members of the Circular Electronics Partnership (CEP), which aims to reduce e-waste and increase circular practices amongst electronics companies.

While historically, hyperscalers have turned to third parties, increasingly, they are turning to in-house solutions to further drive circular practices.

In 2020, Microsoft announced Circular Centers, dedicated to reusing and repurposing servers and other hardware in its data centers. Its servers have an average lifespan of around five years, and Microsoft expects the centers

to increase the reuse of servers and components by up to 90 percent by 2025.

Its first center was launched in Amsterdam, and although it hasn’t shared all center locations, the company said recently it plans to open centers in Boydton, Virginia; Chicago, Illinois; Dublin, Ireland; and Singapore. It noted that its projected savings could reach approximately $100 million each year.

Google is also a major proponent of hardware re-use and refurbish programs. In 2020, 23 percent of the data center hardware components it used in server upgrades were refurbished inventory and 8.2 million components were resold into the secondary market. The refurbishment percentage has stayed around that figure for the last few years, but the number of components resold has increased from 2.1 million in 2016.

Oracle, which sells on-premise appliances to customers and makes its own for cloud services, has its Clean Cloud initiative. The company takes back Oracle products free of charge.

“It is our responsibility to reduce the impact of our hardware at the end of its useful life. When we take back our

hardware for Oracle Cloud and on-prem, we sanitize it for data protection, and then reuse and recycle it as appropriate,” Rich Kroes, VP of global sustainability at Oracle, tells DCD. “Our goal is to reuse and recycle Oracle hardware at the end of life; 99.6 percent of our electronic waste was reused or recycled in FY21.”

Circular thinking with as-aservice hardware

While hyperscalers that own cloud hardware are keen to eke as much value out of those assets as possible, a similar trend is happening in onpremise systems as OEMs transition to hardware-as-a-service models.

Hardware-as-a-service (hardware-aaS) offerings often take form in a leasing model – users lease hardware from the manufacturers and return it at the end of a contract. While leasing isn’t new, many companies are driving the as-a-service’ model for hardware to drive more recurring revenue and align with more ‘cloud-like’ and opex-based strategies.

As a result, OEMs becoming hardware owners as well as manufacturers means re-use and refurbishment is more important as they seek greater returns

Not only is buying refurbished an eco-friendlier route, but it’s also likely to cost substantially less than new, allowing you to stretch your IT budget further and possibly even deploy higherspec equipment than your budget would afford if buying all new

- CRAIG CAMPION, STONE GROUP

on their asset investments. Several manufacturers also operate some form of asset recovery and recycling services.

These services can cover everything from products, packaging, manufacturing and operations to product take back and value recovery including responsible asset recovery and data disposal. When equipment cannot be repaired or resold in secondary markets, it is considered for reuse of parts and components. Raw materials from previous equipment to enable a circular economy.

With these distributed assets – either at a colocation or on-premises customer site – the manufacturer is looking to extract as much value out as possible. This means they’re considering all aspects of the product lifecycle from re-fleeting assets, moving assets from one service contract to another due to technology migrations and managing potentially over-provisioned customers.

Can colos get circular with clients’ kits?

While the move to the cloud means many enterprises have less in the way of IT assets to worry about – and therefore recycle, refurb, or re-use – it’s important

Google

that all companies play their part. Which can be harder to drive in smaller companies that don’t have the added scrutiny often put upon large enterprises that face the pressure of ESG-focused investors and consumers.

According to Uptime’s 2021 Global Data Center survey, just 25 percent percent of companies measure e-waste or equipment life cycle metrics, which it said “underscores the data center sector’s overall immaturity in adopting comprehensive sustainability practices.”

While housing much of the world’s IT hardware, colocation provides can find it harder to drive circular economy thinking. They can use energy from renewable sources, but they don’t own the IT assets within those facilities, and refresh cycles are in the hands of customers.

“Most data center providers don’t own the IT equipment they host, so we can only encourage this behavior. Ultimately, it is down to the customer to implement these kinds of initiatives,” says David Watkins, solutions director for Virtus Data Centres, to DCD. He notes the company has partnered with Technimove, amongst others, to provide recycling services. He also notes that hyperscalers view hardware differently to smaller organizations.

“The larger companies often have bespoke IT equipment, rather than buying products ‘off the shelf,’” he says. “To this end, these large firms view IT equipment in a more granular way; a sum of component parts rather than a ‘server.’ This makes it easier to identify opportunities to recycle/reuse.”

Internally, colo providers that are becoming service providers are also increasingly thinking about circular practices as they too become hardware owners.

“Our Metal services up to Generation 2 are maintained so they are available

UPTIME INSTITUTE

for clients to use. We reprice older generation equipment to encourage clients to move relevant workloads onto these devices,” Michael Winterson, managing director at Equinix Services, told DCD. “With our Generation 3 servers, we use the latest Open19 design standards where much of the basic hardware is common and reusable, for instance chassis and fans. This allows us to plan for many years of service while being able to change out motherboards and expansion devices.

Money talks when ESG doesn’t

Typically, companies that deploy circular strategies have a chief sustainability officer – and reporting requirements – in place.

Circular reporting may include full breakdowns of recovery efforts, outlining how much hardware has been refurbished and recycled, breakdowns of materials, and information including amounts CO2 saved and material which avoided landfill. He notes that some companies are now demanding re-used & refurbished assets in their contracts.

For companies where sustainability isn’t a large driver, the business benefits of such circular thinking can be a selling

point even if the ESG ones aren’t. Many companies looking to extend their current hardware fleet with like-for-like hardware, driving more interest in reused and refurbed equipment. They also want to gain more lifetime value from their investments. This could include extended platform life or receiving assets back into their own environment under a different usage case to leverage the depreciation value of the asset on their balance sheet.

“Migrating everything to the next-gen may not make sense from a budget standpoint,” says Jim O’Grady, VP of global assess management, HPE, to DCD. “Targeting your mission critical infrastructure transformational needs first probably makes sense. And then let’s figure out how used equipment can extend the life of existing platforms or reuse those platforms in another workload scenario.”

HPE said it has given more than $400 million back to customers through its asset lifecycle initiatives in fiscal 2021. Hyperscalers are also seeing the benefits of keeping hardware going for as long as possible. AWS recently said more efficient software meant it could add a year to the expected lifespan of servers and network equipment to five and six years, respectively.

Google made a similar decision. In its earnings call for Q4 2021 the company said it decided to keep its cloud data center hardware running for an extra year and booked $2.6 billion of depreciation savings as a result.

In the future, circular approaches could become even more important. Buying refurbished products is a more environmentally friendly choice and it may be more cost-effective, too. This means data centers can potentially stretch IT budgets further and possibly even deploy higher-spec equipment than budgets would allow if buying all new. 

Just 25 percent of companies measure e-waste or equipment life cycle metrics, which underscores the data center sector’s overall immaturity in adopting comprehensive sustainability practices

THINKING FOR THE FUTURE

Take a holistic approach to better prepare your data center for the future

Data centers also face increased scrutiny from regulators, investors, and customers to develop more environmentally friendly practices that help drive down their carbon footprint and reduce energy consumption. Depending on the country or region in which the data center operates, they may be facing increased reporting and transparency requirements.

How data center operators strategize to meet these demands can mean the difference between potential success and probable failure given the increasing importance of ESG goals to clients and investors. Data centers must plan for the future while remaining adaptable to the increasing number of regulations, reducing energy use, and meeting the demand for growth.

A holistic approach from the ground up

Given the industry’s 24/7 operations and ongoing need for reliable power,

a holistic approach to data center operations can be critical to helping mitigate future challenges, avoiding common pitfalls, and helping to reach sustainability goals. As data center planning takes place, it’s essential for different perspectives to be considered in the process, including that of the chief sustainability officer. This practice is becoming more common in the industry today.

As more changes impact the industry, developers must model their facilities to adhere to current building codes as well as be prepared to adapt to future needs, keeping in mind both functionality and taking preventative steps against future challenges and costly upgrades.

Managing challenges through an integrated solution

With such rapid growth in the industry, data centers are also often facing the need to do more with less. Data centers need more qualified employees to address growing operational and reporting requirements. The good thing is that the tools already exist to help with these needs.

Still, many data center teams manually collect information from various systems to determine what actions to take to optimize energy consumption and help enable their data center to operate at peak performance. Manual operations can be a relic of the past.

A building management solution can offer data center managers an integrated approach that enables them to digitize, aggregate and analyze data from OT and IT subsystems, which helps create greater efficiencies in facilities without increasing headcount.

Thinking about the future

While the demand for data centers is an upward swing, their large energy consumption may make it difficult to continue operating using traditional energy sources. As discussed, data centers must look at renewable energy that may also help reduce their carbon impact.

Data centers must have a thoughtful approach to long-term goals, the changing landscape, and the demands to meet the growing needs of businesses while managing their environmental impact. It is becoming increasingly important to look at renewable energy that may also help reduce their carbon impact. Approaching data center development and operations with a more holistic view can help advance facilities’ sustainability goals and provide an opportunity to jump ahead of challenges.

Honeywell offers an end-toend solution to cover your needs

Honeywell experts are available to help with end-to-end data center lifecycle planning and maintenance so that customers can focus on more strategic initiatives that can help drive business growth.

Our suite of solutions feature tools that can help optimize uptime, improve resiliency, support sustainability and increase efficiency as well as support safety and security efforts.

To connect with one of our experts today to learn more about our data center solutions please click here 

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