The decarbonization of data centers

The decarbonization of data centers Industry leaders share their experiences with other fastgrowing industrial sectors

Irish construction Helping the world build better Ireland is helping the global construction industry respond to its greatest challenges and opportunities: designing and delivering advanced infrastructure across the data, pharma and energy sectors while improving resource efficiencies and delivering the innovations that are shaping the future of construction.

Renowned for their adaptable approach, flexible supply chain and unequalled engineering expertise, Irish companies are delivering the most demanding projects in over 100 countries worldwide.

Enterprise Ireland is the Irish Government’s trade and innovation agency. Our construction experts across the world, understand your requirements, and can match you with a shortlist of Irish construction partners.

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Our contributors Ireland’s contractors, engineering, and advisory companies at the heart of global hyperscale and MTDC design-build and operation, have shared the insights and learnings they have gained supporting the industry to decarbonise. The lessons leant from this experience are highly relevant for other fast-growing industrial sectors.

For more on our valued contributors see p.40

Contents Foreword

Page 5

The decarbonization of data centers

Page 6

The story so far…

Page 10

Decentralization of power generation

Page 15

Innovation in data center construction

Page 19

Better building by building offsite

Page 24

The twofold imperative

Page 28

Ensuring data centers use water responsibly

Page 33

Further resources

Page 39

Meet Enterprise Ireland’s construction team

Page 43

Foreword Reflecting on the negotiations and commitments made during COP26 in Glasgow, the scale of the journey to Net Zero has never been clearer. The largest capital reallocation in history will need to provide sufficient funding to unpick and transition the energy platform of global growth for over 200 years, but in a fraction of the time. The size of the task ahead includes the re-prioritization of key behaviors including responsibility, collaboration, and partnership if we are to move collectively and with purpose in the time available.

This EBook looks to capture a wide range of International perspectives from the data center supply chain. To share insights and innovations from decarbonization that have been accrued through delivering built assets for some of the world’s most ambitious and energy dependent enterprises.

For over a decade, the emphasis of the sector has been on speed of build and optimizing energy use in data centers, but coupled with increasing energy scarcity, a soaring cost of carbon and greater demand for societal alignment, we believe decarbonization is accelerating at pace and with key learnings that other energy intensive industries could benefit from.

The data center industry couples operational energy intensity with an exponential growth

trajectory; a trajectory that closely maps our societal acceptance and adoption of digital technologies. The client group is led by some of the world’s largest and most profitable organizations, driving the highest standards with the liquidity to invest in the most innovative and impactful of solutions.

Through the ‘Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact’ signed earlier this year, we have already seen the early ambition and action of data center operators moving forward together on climate action. Noting with interest a COP declaration that the UK’s industrialized food retailers are also to follow this ‘Climate collaboration first, Competition second’ model.

For the past 15 years, Enterprise Ireland has been supporting the transition of Ireland’s design and construction industry from a domestic orientation to one that is truly international and exporting products, services and technology to over 100 countries.

This EBook offers an opportunity for us to share a wide range of international sector perspectives, experiences and the possibility thinking of this exciting, energy intensive and rapidly decarbonizing industrial sector.

Finally, a word of thanks to our partners in the production of this report and also an invitation across other industrialized sectors, traditional and the emerging advanced technology sectors, to work together along the shared path to net zero.

- John Hunt, Global Construction Lead, Enterprise Ireland

The decarbonization of data centers SUSTAINABLE DESIGN AND BUILD STRATEGIES - INSIGHTS AND LESSONS LEARNED

The climate imperative - time for action In 2015, all members of the United Nations adopted the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and, with it, the 17 sustainable development goals at its core. This was followed by the Green Deal for Europe in 2019, planning to make Europe the first climateneutral continent by the end of 2050. This gives us little over a decade to turn the global trend toward climate sustainability.

For contractors, engineering, and advisory companies building for the next-generation of energy-intensive sectors such as industrial manufacturing, factories, bio-pharma and utilities, this climate imperative is stimulating a wave of technological innovation and new paradigms of thinking around sustainability.

The race to net-zero is well underway.

The data center industry has been particularly under the microscope and it is, perhaps, easy to see why. Global multi-tenant data center capacity by available power grew 62.4 percent in the five years through 2020; a compound annual growth rate of nearly 10.2 percent, according to 451 Research. By 2024, forecasts suggest data centers will exceed 32 gigawatts of electrical power available to customer IT systems. This is comparable to 25 million homes.

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With this continued growth trajectory, it is little surprise that both regulators and the general public have become more focused on data center resource consumption over recent years. Indeed, data centers have taken on a leadership position in developing best-practice in environmental performance and net-zero pledges. This Ebook is dedicated to sharing those insights.

As the insatiable appetite for digital transformation increases, it’s incumbent upon the world’s most influential sectors – from data centers to advanced manufacturing – to make a unanimous decision to continue this transformation with sustainability at the forefront of their strategies.

Digital Infrastructure is leading the way There has been a proactive response from the data center industry in particular to this challenge with many lessons to be learned from the approaches being taken. Self-build hyperscalers such as Google and Microsoft have made aggressive pledges and net-positive goals. This has been followed by providers such as Vantage and NTT as well as suppliers such as IBM and Schneider Electric. Indeed, earlier in 2021, the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact was signed by 25 operators and 17 associations including Equinix, AWS, and Google.

The goals of the pact The Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact has five goals.

Efficiency Data centers must meet a high energy efficiency standard. By 2025 new data centers bigger than 50kW must have an annual power usage effectiveness of 1.3 in cool climates and 1.4 in warmer climates where heat removal is harder. Existing data centers have till 2030 to reach this target. The pact also proposes to develop a new metric that could replace or extend PUE. Green energy Data center energy use will be 75 percent matched by renewable energy by 2025, and 100 percent matched by 2030.

Water use Data centers will improve their water conservation - but the target won’t be defined until 2022.

Reuse and recycle Data centers will move towards a circular economy by “assessing” all equipment for recycling and reuse, and increasing the amount they recycle - but an actual target won’t be set until 2025.

Heat reuse Data center operators will all examine the possibility of offering waste heat to district heating systems or industrial customers. No targets are set though.

Figure 1

This is not purely down to corporate/ public pressure or staying a step ahead of the regulators but the growing customer expectations for sustainability and the evolution of technology ensuring the economics are becoming more attractive.

As the recent survey from 451 illustrates (see figure 1), customer requirements and operational benefits are driving decarbonization forwards.

This is also true in other sectors such as highenergy plants where end-user requirements and efficiencies brought about by digitization are driving change.

As Philip O’ Doherty, Managing Director of E+I

Figure 2

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Engineering, told us: “there is an opportunity here also. Transparency and sustainable practices will soon be table stakes in winning new business.” This is also supported by the recent DCD survey (see figure 2) with global operators highlighting the importance of sustainability to customer decision-making over the next couple of years.

With this focus and collaboration, there is much to be learned from the data center journey towards net-zero thus far. Michael Winterson, Equinix Chairman, suggested the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact may even become a template for other sectors. “It can be the catalyst for testing new ideas that benefit other industries”

Figure 3

Transferable insight on the road to net-zero •

Create actionable programs with executive support and report on them.

Make this transparent and find the 20 percent who will drive it through the organization. Collaboration across the value chain is key. See more on this wider collaboration and transparency in ‘The Story So Far’ p.10

•

Consider your energy supply - how can you incorporate renewables and collaborate with your utility providers developing a comprehensive procurement strategy? See more on this energy revolution in ‘Decentralization of Power Generation’ p.15

•

Look deeper into your supply-chains, engaging with partners that will support your reduction targets and reduce the embodied carbon in the building itself.

See more on this holistic thinking in ‘Innovation in Data Center Construction ‘ p.19

•

Innovate building and manufacturing process by utilizing new technology such as prefabrication to enhance efficiency, speed and minimize waste. See more on this and understand use cases in ‘Building Better by Building Offsite’ p.24

•

Develop efficient, standardized, and digitally-led designs incorporating new technology and environmental compliance. See more on this technology innovation such as Digital Twins in ‘The Twofold Imperative’ p.28

•

Think about your water usage - measure Water Usage Effectiveness and consider circular initiatives for how waste products may be utilized elsewhere. See more on this in ‘Ensuring Data Centers Use Water Responsibly’ p.33

Planning for sustainability Incorporating sustainability in practices can be easier said than done. “It begins with transparency,” said Sinéad Hickey, Head of Sustainability at John Sisk & Son Ltd, and “more robust thinking is required around sustainability.”

Indeed, where historically the thinking may have centered around operational efficiency and scope 1 emissions, there is now a much more strategic approach across the whole value-chain to benchmark and measure scope 2 and 3 emissions also. Beyond the operational efficiencies, strategies are now being put into place to look at renewables, building materials, and circularity. See figure 3, for example, on Microsoft’s recent carbon negative pledge.

Key lessons learned on the journey DCD & Enterprise Ireland have created this Ebook to capture the expertise and innovations of Ireland’s contractors, engineering, and advisory companies at the heart of global hyperscale and Multi-Tenant Data Center (MTDC) design-build and operation. We thank all the contributors for their time in creating this guide.

As the data center industry continues to travel along the road to net-zero, the experiences are transferable to other sectors also on this path.

We wanted to disseminate this insight and highlight the success of the Irish construction and engineering industry at the heart of the supply chain.

The story so far…

THE NET-ZERO PLEDGES MADE BY MANY MAJOR ORGANIZATIONS WON’T BE EASY TO KEEP, BUT EVERYONE IS NOW GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT TRYING TO ACHIEVE IT AND DATA CENTERS ARE LEADING THE WAY.

This September, it was revealed that more than 200 companies signed The Climate Pledge, an initiative launched by Amazon and Global Optimism to achieve net-zero by 2040.

But the question still remains over how, exactly, many of these companies will achieve this, especially in terms of the ‘scope 3’ emissions generated in their supply chains.

That’s why the construction industry, in particular, is now rushing to decarbonize after a somewhat slow start, while the data center sector – a notorious consumer of power – has already started down the road to carbon

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neutrality by, for example, hooking up to sustainable power supplies and looking at ways to reuse waste heat.

While the data center sector is estimated to account for around two percent of global power consumption – forecast to rise to as high as eight-to-10 percent by the end of the decade, depending on who you ask – the built environment accounts for the largest share of global CO2 emissions of any economic sector, both in terms of construction and in terms of energy consumption (largely for heating and cooling) when a building is completed.

The race to net zero The data center industry consumes a huge amount of energy, but it is making huge strides to be one of the fastest sectors to make the switch to net zero - highlighting how the rest of the economy can follow suit.

Hyperscale giants like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are already carbon neutral, via power purchase agreements, and now target 24/7 carbon-free energy. OVHcloud has a goal to be 100 percent carbon-free by 2025.

Behind them are companies like Vantage, Colt, Chindata, and STT GDC, which have all agreed to become carbon-neutral by 2030.

CyrusOne has promised to be carbon neutral by 2040.

Interconnection giant Equinix hopes to cut emissions by 50 percent by 2030, and use all renewables that year. Rival Digital Realty set itself a goal in 2020 of reducing its emissions 66 percent by 2030.

This comes out of a mixture of genuine care for the planet they inhabit, and pragmatic thinking. A number of the companies mention came together to form the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, a European initiative to be carbon neutral by 2030.

“We agreed to create a framework document, to allow us to be a self-regulated industry,” Michael Winterson, the UK MD at Equinix, told DCD. “Because otherwise, regulation would have been inevitable.”

“There is now an onus on the industry to make net-zero happen and to work out what we can do to support the green economy,” Dennis Nordon, Managing Director at turnkey data center solutions provider Hanley Energy, said.

In the data center sector, the shift has been going on for some time, but in practical terms has been largely driven by the biggest operators with the biggest data centers – companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

They pioneered the use of sustainable power for their data centers, often investing in wind and solar farms to provide power to their facilities. They have also selected locations on environmental, as well as business grounds.

For example, Facebook’s data center in Luleå, northern Sweden is able to use free-air cooling almost all year round, drastically cutting the cost of cooling the data center, which in warmer climes accounts for 40 percent or more of a facility’s power consumption.

And when a company like Microsoft declares that it is not merely aiming for carbon neutrality, but to go net-negative carbon, it can have an impact far beyond even the technology and data center sector.

Now, according to Diarmuid O’Sullivan, Director of Ireland and Europe at John Sisk & Son, even construction firms are setting carbon-neutral targets.

“There is now an onus on the industry to make net-zero happen and to work out what we can do to support the green economy,” Dennis Nordon, Hanley Energy

“I have had a number of client meetings in recent months talking through our ambitions in relation to sustainability,” he adds.

Furthermore, the development of sustainability standards, such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), has helped to put everyone on the same page, with LEED standards also being tightened and improved over the past decade.

As a result, Rebecca Reilly, Quality and Environmental Manager at Collen Construction, has also seen an upsurge in demand for more sustainable construction: “Building green has become key. Our clients demand it. In July 2018 we completed the first design-build green data center, certified LEED Gold standard.

to achieve sustainability goals,” she says. As a result, the old construction industry ‘silos’ are breaking down and greater collaboration has been encouraged, she adds.

John Sisk & Son even has its own 2030 environmental strategy. “We recently launched our 2030 sustainability roadmap. Within that, we have 21 targets. From a client perspective, these are the types of questions that we are being asked initially, not just in the tendering process, but also in regular conversations and catch-ups with clients in terms of where we are in relation to our own sustainability journey, what we’re doing, and how we can engage with them,” says O’Sullivan.

“The growth of these frameworks and standards helps align all stakeholders on how

The company’s 2030 Roadmap includes a number of ‘hard’ targets, such as reducing carbon intensity by 50 percent from a 2019 baseline by 2026 and converting half of its fleet of vehicles to electric by 2024 – with all fossil fueled vehicles phased out by 2030.

“Sustainability is now someone’s job. There is buy-in at the “Sustainability is now someone’s executive level and it is driving job.

There is buy-in at the executive level projects forward,” and it is driving projects forward,” Mark Gillett, PM Group Mark Gillett, PM Group

As such, John Sisk & Sons’ sustainability strategy won’t be resorting to any creative carbon accounting. “It really is about achieving a carbon-neutral status without offsetting.

For us, a significant contributor to our carbon footprint is the use of diesel generators on-site.

So, for instance, in the UK we’re transitioning to hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO) fuel, which is a 100 percent renewable form of diesel,” says O’Sullivan.

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Concrete thinking A trickier carbon challenge is concrete, which is highly carbon-intensive (largely due to its cement content) but essential to the construction industry. Indeed, says O’Sullivan, concrete/cement alone is responsible for as much as eight percent of global CO2 emissions. That breaks down into two parts: the chemical reaction as calcium carbonate is heated and the carbon bonds with oxygen, and emissions from the massive coal-fired kilns in which concrete is made.

However, there are a number of innovative products being developed that could make for interesting alternatives.

One of those innovations is called ‘freement,’ which is based on recycled concrete and the fact that about only half of the cement used in concrete remains unactivated, but can be liberated via a process called ‘smart crushing.’

Indeed, the ‘curing process’ can last decades – the concrete in the Hoover Dam, for example, which was built in the 1930s, is still curing 90 years after it was built.

“It’s something we’re looking at for a huge new project at the moment... it’s very exciting and actually looks like it could be a good solution – it seems like a very viable option,” says O’Sullivan.

embodied in new builds – is via modularization and prefabrication, according to Kevin Maguire, an Associate Director at RKD, an architecture firm with several Irish data center projects under its belt.

Off-site fabrication also helps with minimizing waste, adds Maguire, more easily enabling off-cuts to be re-used or recycled. On-site, such waste typically ends up in a skip. “When you build off-site, it means less waste and less construction time-on-site,” says Maguire, pointing out that it also means vastly less transport time, too, which with current modes of transport also means more CO2 emissions.

Indeed, according to Mercury Engineering’s Group Design, Innovation, and Quality Manager, Justin Keane, the construction industry is very much moving towards modularization. “It’s the way to go and the way we should do things. It helps provide cost certainty, fewer deliveries to site, it’s more environmentally controlled and safe for staff. It is becoming the norm,” says Keane.

Modular and off-site construction is covered in more detail on page 24.

Better management

Another way of better managing build processes – and, therefore, the potential CO2

Fexillon is a specialist in the building and asset

“There are experts looking into materials and supply chains and, if it’s not green, you won’t get the contract,” Mark Gillett, PM Group

lifecycle, providing software and services to help improve management from design all the way through to delivery and beyond.

“Part of the way we see it is that driving sustainability is also about productivity and resource management. It is not just the environment, but how we interact with it, making sure that engineers have everything they need,” says Kieran Beggan, CEO of Fexillon (formerly known as IFS). That can even help to reduce travel and building time, and better management means less scope for human error, he adds.

The introduction of innovations such as BIM – building information modeling – and the digitalization of the build process all the way

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from the drawing board to decommissioning – has also helped to put more sustainable building on the map.

Above all, says Mark Gillett, sector direction – mission critical, at PM Group, supporting corporate environmental and sustainability issues has now become a viable career.

“Sustainability is now someone’s job. There is buy-in at the executive level and it is driving projects forward. This is key for other industries to follow,” says Gillett.

“It’s far more holistic now. But it’s not just about operating efficiencies: there are experts looking into materials and supply chains and, if it’s not green, you won’t get the contract,” he warns.

Certainly, adds Maguire, the days of erecting a puny wind turbine or two next to a new facility and considering the environmental box ticked are long gone.

The following articles in this Ebook explore each of these key areas in more detail, from the decentralization of power, to construction innovations, to offsite building, big data, and responsible water usage.

Decentralization of power generation THE WORLD IS ON A TIGHT DEADLINE. WE NEED TO DECARBONIZE RAPIDLY, OR THE WORLD WILL OVERHEAT CATASTROPHICALLY. WHAT CAN DATA CENTERS DO ABOUT IT?

“[The IPPC] report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet,” António Guterres, UN Secretary-General

The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the physical science of climate change made it clearer than ever that urgent action is needed.

“This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. With the planet already warmed by 1.2°C, the only way to head off an increase to 1.5°C, he said, is to put the brakes on.

“There must be no new coal plants built after 2021 [and existing coal power plants must be phased out]. Countries should also end all new fossil fuel exploration and production, and shift fossil-fuel subsidies into renewable energy.”

This needs a massive effort by the whole of society - what can data centers and their contractors do to help? They’re a single sector, but they are a large user of electricity - and round the world, electricity still comes largely from coal, oil, and gas.

“Carbon fuel is not sustainable,” says Kevin Maguire, an associate director at RKD, an architecture firm with several Irish data center projects under its belt. “The carbon fuel has to go and everyone is realizing this.”

But what do they need to learn? The first answer is a simple one - buy renewable energy.

Data centers add a great deal of value to their electricity, so they can afford to pay a premium for a green tariff. But look at the transaction in a global context, and there’s a problem.

Renewable supplies are ramping up quickly, but getting off fossil fuel is going to radically increase the demand for electricity. If we want to decarbonize sectors including road transport and home heating in the next ten years, we need to use electric cars, and electric boilers or heat pumps, effectively shifting those sectors onto the grid, and adding a huge amount to the demand for green electricity.

“The grid, in general, is under increased demand from high energy users,” Enda Molloy,

Expert insight: Hanley Energy DCD>Talks Energy DCD>Talks

management with Dennis Nordon, Hanley Energy

“Early-stage engagement is key in planning sustainably and at speed as the relationship with the grid continues to evolve,” Enda Molloy, H&MV Engineering

Business Development Director at EPC contractor H&MV Engineering explained.

“Utility infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with the increased electrification of everyday life. Early-stage engagement is key in planning sustainably and at speed as the relationship with the grid continues to evolve.”

At any given time, there’s only a finite amount of renewable electricity available. If data centers use all of it, what’s left for the rest of society?

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The situation is even more pointed in Ireland, where data centers are growing fast, and utility EirGrid’s analysis shows that “demand from data centers could account for 27 percent of all demand in Ireland by 2029 in our Median demand scenario.”

The same is true across Europe and the world, where steady expansion in grid use is coming up against the twin growth of data centers and electric car charging stations.

Given all that, it’s clear that the sector needs to do all it can to create new renewable power, and shift the load away from the grid.

But how is this possible? There are a range of answers emerging from new thinking in the energy sector, including microgrids, demandresponse, and hydrogen power.

“The energy source is key in this - hydro has been used in Nordics and Ireland effectively, solar farms are being funded by hyperscalers, waste heat reuse is becoming common,” Dennis Nordon, managing director of turnkey data center solution provider Hanley Energy, said.

Data centers should clearly ensure that they increase the overall renewable capacity of the

grid in order to be part of the solution, not the problem, and luckily, the country allows power purchase agreements (PPAs) where the data center operator pays to build a wind farm or other renewable energy supply, that will generate an amount of energy that is at least equal to the amount it uses.

need continuous power. The wind farms may produce an average power that covers the data center’s usage, but some of it will be generated in peaks which may not match the peaks in demand, while the data center needs powering on still, dark nights when there’s no renewable capacity.

Operators like Amazon and Facebook have eased the building of large facilities across Europe by taking out PPAs which cover their energy use and leave the country with more renewable energy to use - at least in theory.

That’s why operators like Google and Microsoft are moving towards hour-by-hour calculations of the emissions generated by their site, with a goal of eventually being net-zero on a continuous basis, not just on average.

However, renewable sources of power like wind and sun are intermittent, while data centers

Another way forward is on-site generation. “In terms of utility security - if the supply wobbles, what do we do?” Nordon asked. “We manage the changeover to self-generation.”

“At this moment in time many EU countries and countries worldwide are beginning to embrace hydrogen,” Dr. Carton, Assistant Professor in Sustainable Energy, Dublin City University

Operators are looking at generating energy at their data center, so it will add less load to the grid. Energy sources under consideration for this include wind and solar, obviously, but also fuel cells which could ultimately be powered by “green hydrogen,” an energy source with no emissions but water and warm air, providing a useful way to store the energy made in renewable energy peaks.

One alternative could be hydrogen. “At this moment in time many EU countries and countries worldwide are beginning to embrace

hydrogen,” Dr. Carton told a government committee on climate action in September.

Others “must follow this lead; produce green hydrogen at a useful scale, deploy it in suitable mature applications such as heavy transport, industry, and data center power generation.”

That’s for the future, but right now, data centers already have energy resources on their site, both good and bad, to provide for reliability if the grid fails. They have batteries (usually lead-acid systems) holding enough energy to support the data center for several minutes, and diesel generators which can then take over and run the facility till normal power returns.

The batteries can be a force for good, and Ireland has been operating a scheme for some time that allows data center operators to help the rest of society by sharing their stored battery energy.

Fast frequency response (FFR) is a program where the utility requests energy from batteries at data centers or other large users, when the grid is under strain. ”With fast frequency response, you are providing services for the grid, and getting revenue by providing those services,” explains Janne Paananen, Technology Manager of energy equipment company Eaton. “Instead of responding to the cost of energy, you respond to a real-time signal.”

Facilities on the FFR program get a signal roughly once a month, says Paananen.

“Normally, the frequency deviation lasts for only a few seconds.” This is a level of usage that traditional lead-acid batteries can readily support - and FFR can stand in for normal scheduled battery tests.

The other part of the data center’s backup power is more of a problem: “Diesels have to go,” says Séan Hogan, Sustainability Leader at RKD. “They can’t have 20 diesel generators sitting there ready to roll,” agrees Kevin Maguire from RKD. “Nobody accepts that anymore. One hour of diesel generators running near your house is no longer acceptable, so they have to go towards more sustainable fuels.”

To some extent the data center sector is shielded from being forced into major changes, because it is a source of inward investment.

However, at some point, it will have to take responsibility - and at that stage, data centers have plenty of tools at their disposal, to demonstrate they can be part of the solution to the decarbonization dilemma.

Watch the panel discussion: Is the supply chain in order for the scale that’s coming?

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Innovation in data center construction DRIVING CARBON FOOTPRINTS DOWN THROUGH BETTER CONSTRUCTION AND INNOVATION

While keeping energy costs down through efficiencies is a mainstay of data center development both in Ireland and across the world, there is an increasing focus on how to reduce the environmental footprint of data centers during the construction phase.

A number are also looking at ways to build in ways to be more sustainable with regards to energy use and distribution. Here, contractors are helping data centers lead the way - while also bringing their learnings to the wider construction industry.

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, and is a major source of carbon globally.

Cement and steel are the most carbonintensive materials commonly used within data center construction; concrete often accounts for as much as 40 percent of a data center’s construction. Globally, some 14 billion cubic meters of concrete are produced each year, equating to around seven percent of global CO2 emissions.

Globally, some 14 billion cubic meters of concrete are produced each year, equating to around seven percent of global CO2 emissions.

The Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) – which includes forty of the world’s leading cement and concrete manufacturers – recently launched a roadmap to net zero. The GCCA aims to cut almost five billion tonnes of carbon via a 25 percent emission reduction by 2030, before decarbonizing by 2050.

Thomas Guillot, GCCA Chief Executive, said: “Global cooperation on decarbonizing concrete is a necessity, as countries developing their infrastructure and housing will be the biggest users of concrete in the coming decades. I envision a world in the not too distant future where the foundation of a sustainable, zero carbon global economy will literally be built with green concrete.”

Green concrete is when concrete uses waste material as at least one of its components, or its production process does not lead to environmental destruction - but there a debates about the level of reused waste material required to classify it as green.

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company. North American data center firm Compass has said it saves an average of 1,800 tons of CO2 per campus as a result of using CarbonCure.

“We are benchmarking how concrete, cladding, and roof structures can be minimized in terms of the embodied carbon they are producing and working with our supply chain in developing environmental product declarations along that path,” Justin Keane, Director of Digital Delivery, Offsite Manufacturing and Quality at construction contractor Mercury, said.

Information is power According to the Uptime Institute’s most recent survey, around 82 percent of firms record IT or data center power consumption, but only 33 percent collect carbon emissions data for that energy use.

In the meantime, there are a number of initiatives and efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of a data center’s construction phase.

Both Microsoft and Google have released tools that allow customers to see the carbon emissions of their public cloud use, while Microsoft’s specifically includes calculations around Scope 3 emissions.

One startup, CarbonCure, reduces the emissions of the concrete industry, by injecting waste CO2 into the mix. It hopes to remove 500 megatons of carbon dioxide annually from the concrete industry by 2030. Amazon and Microsoft, two companies with significant footprints in Ireland, have invested in the

A number of standards & certifications around sustainable buildings exist – LEED is probably the most well-known – but they often focus on the entirety of a building’s lifecycle. Actually measuring and tracking embodied carbon and the environmental impact of the construction phase has traditionally been difficult, making

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program.

The role of EC3 The Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3) is a free tool for benchmarking, assessing, and reducing embodied carbon in the construction material supply chain.

European contractor Mercury used the tool to achieve significant reductions in the concrete, steel structure, and the building envelope for its clients - including a data center in the Netherlands.

A pilot sponsor of the tool, Mercury found that the transparency EC3 brought helped across the construction lifecycle, both in data centers, and wider afield.

it hard to quantify emissions and begin to change.

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. Another project is the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3) from Building Transparency.

EC3 takes disclosed Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) – which are third party verified disclosures that detail information around carbon impact, including kilogram of carbon per unit – and collates them in a free and open source tool in which users can input their own materials-use during a planned construction project.

It then creates what is essentially a bill of materials and cost estimate in terms of carbon impact per item, allowing users to easily see the environmental impact of their material choices, but also see if there are more sustainable alternatives available.

Microsoft was an early pilot partner of the tool, and the company has been using it in its Washington campus remodel as well as its data centers in order to choose lower carbon building materials. US and European construction firms Turner Construction and Mercury are both pilot partners for the EC3

“Six years ago, you could order pallets of marble or concrete with little consideration of the carbon impact,” Rebecca Reilly, Quality and Environmental Manager at Irish contractor Collen Construction, recalled. “Now when you are ordering material, we are all thinking where it’s coming from and what the total environmental impact is. [It’s all about] planning for construction ahead of time and thinking about Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions.”

Reducing building time through modularizations Google’s Regional Director for EMEA data center infrastructure delivery, Paul Henry told DCD his company has focused intensely on standardizing not only the design, but the overall execution strategy of data construction.

This standardized system “takes a lot of design work on the front end to build a modularization strategy, rather than stick build in the field,” Henry said. “We’ve done that - in our new generation of data center design, we’re actually looking to take about 50 percent of our job hours off of the construction site, and move it into manufacturing facilities.”

Before breaking ground, Google creates a work package defining the entire bill of materials for a scope of work, including job hours and crew size, as well as component cost. “So very much akin to the Ikea strategy,” he said. “It’s all been pre-defined.”

The changes have helped Google bring construction time down from 22 months to less than 18 months. It hopes to squeeze that further, down to just 12 months - reducing cost and making it easier to predict demand. Henry noted that offsite manufacturing is key to achieving these gains.

Such rapid pace of delivery is something other companies should look to data centers to learn from, Gary O’Keeffe, Director of Data Centers at Dublin-based design & engineering firm Ethos Engineering.

“While data centers are large, when you distill them down, they’re generally small, repeatable blocks. So it’s something that’s very, very scalable; build those smaller blocks right and you can build on them or expand them quite easily.

Expert insight: DCD>Talks Benchmarks and supply-chain management with Rebecca Reilly, Collen Construction infrastructure can be beneficial in the long run.

He says that results in less design risk, and enables companies to get into the likes of prefabrication.

“That is a big learning to come from the data centers that can go into other industries,” he adds. “We haven’t gotten to the point that we deliver data centers flat-pack from off of the back of a lorry, but what you do see is more repeatable elements built off-site, commissioned, and delivered.”

O’Keeffe notes, however, that due to the fact data centers are often built in phases as demand requires – the first phase might often be around 10 percent of a facility’s final capacity – delivering the entire facility as one prefabricated product could add unnecessary delays to a project and lead to unused capacity.

The ability to be as modular and repeatable as possible is key to meet the required scale of any one project as required, but that could change.

Giving back heat and energy While construction is an important area of focus, the actual operation of data centers are where much of their carbon emissions are generated, and so finding a way to reduce that lifetime impact through additional

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“The buildings of the future need to deliver more than ever before,” Gene M. Murtagh, CEO of Irish advanced insulation and building envelope solutions company Kingspan Group said, “They must combat climate change by maximizing energy efficiency through superior thermal performance while incorporating products that are lower in embodied carbon across their entire lifecycle. Using less energy is not enough; buildings should generate their own energy too.”

A recent study from Bloomberg notes that in Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, and the UK, hyperscale and colocation data centers will reach a total design capacity of 6.9GW by the end of 2021, and a live IT power demand of 3GW. Facilities across the five countries will use a combined 26TWh of electricity in 2021, equivalent to around 2.3 percent of the countries’ total annual electricity use.

Many solar panel-equipped houses are now capable of contributing excess power back to the grid, and as longer-term battery storage improves, the opportunities to change the traditional dynamics with energy grids change and present the chance to operate more sustainably.

The Bloomberg report notes that some data center operators, including Microsoft, DigiPlex, and BaseFarm, use or are planning to use their

UPS to provide grid services, and highlights more companies should be looking at flexible loads and time-shifting and transporting workloads dynamically.

In County Wicklow, Echelon Data Centres and Biocore Environmental Ltd are planning to colocate a biogas production facility on a data center campus in Arklow. As well as providing backup power to the data center when needed, the residue from the production process can be dried and re-supplied to the farms for use as fertilizer.

As grids modernize and are more able to accept contributed energy from alternative sources, more and more buildings can potentially look to generate renewable energy and store it on-site before contributing back to the grid at different times.

Ethos’ O’Keeffe notes that the retrofit of solar panels at data centers is becoming more common; and whilst it will never be able to meet the peak demand on a site it can offset much of the back of house load for any office work and some of the building equipment such as lighting.

It’s also crucial to plan sustainability as soon as a project begins. “What we’re actually finding now with sustainability is we’re being asked to get involved in projects earlier and earlier,” Ethos CEO Greg Hayden told the Business Post.

“What we’re actually finding now with sustainability is we’re being asked to get involved in projects earlier and earlier,” Greg Hayden, Ethos

Another way companies can give back through sustainability is through district heating schemes. In Dublin, AWS is helping develop a district heating scheme that will draw heat from its local data center and run through a heat exchanger that both cools the data center and heats up water that is delivered to a nearby heat pump operated by local non-profit Heatworks. Due for operation in 2022, initial customers include South Dublin County Council and the Tallaght campus of the Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin).

Such district heating schemes are increasingly common in Europe and are slowly spreading in Asia and the US. While most office environments or residential buildings will want to draw heat from such systems, any property that generates heat can contribute to such a scheme; retail outlets with significant refrigeration are a good example.

Be it through better supply chains, intelligent design, or working with the grid, data centers could lead the way on sustainability, Hayden said. “They bring innovation and talent to our shores, and they’re strong advocates for using as little energy as possible, in as efficient a way as possible.”

He added: “They’re going to perfect this over time and, in my view, it’s much more good than bad.”

Better building by building offsite MODULAR BUILDING: DESIGNING FOR MANUFACTURE AND ASSEMBLY IN CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENTS DOESN’T JUST SPEED UP BUILDING PROCESSES, BUT CAN IMPROVE QUALITY AND SUSTAINABILITY, TOO

Every site is different. Local environments make for unique challenges that can stymie or delay projects. So, why not just shift the hard work away from the site?

While whole data center buildings have yet to be trucked-in entirely from the factory, that’s certainly the way in which the construction industry is heading, says Gary O’Keeffe, Director of Data Centers at Ethos Engineering, and not just for data centers, but for the whole gamut of commercial construction.

“We haven’t got to the point where data centers are delivered in a flat-pack off the

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back of a lorry, yet, but what you do see are the more repeatable pieces that don’t change much, such as items for the electrical rooms, medium generator, enclosures, a lot of major cooling plants that can be built off-site, commissioned and delivered to site,” says O’Keeffe.

Often, these elements are pre-built in the factory, tested, and can then be installed straight away, whether the building is a data center, retail unit, factory, or pharmaceuticals plant, saving time on-site.

Along with reducing construction time, it

“We haven’t got to the point where data centers are delivered in a flatpack off the back of a lorry - yet,” Gary O’Keeffe, Ethos Engineering

lowers costs, and - crucially - the need for as many experienced hands at the site itself.

of off-site construction – a trend likely to be copied by other industry sectors.

However, adds O’Keeffe, in the data center sector it’s not uncommon for operators to prioritize the first three or four megawatts in order to achieve site launch, delivering cash flow to the bottom line as soon as possible, then launching the rest of the site over a longer period.

“The future of data center design is modular,” says Hudock. “The efficiencies gained through the introduction of modular data centers simply cannot be matched through traditional brick and mortar construction. And the flexibility of modular power construction can streamline data center projects from planning right through to commissioning,” he says.

Robert Hudock, a Director of Regional Sales at E+I Engineering, goes further. He believes that, soon, pretty much every data center project will be modular and subject to a high degree

“If you’re working in the Arctic Circle, prefabricating items in a factory environment can be very successful, especially if you can do it close by,” Diarmuid O’Sullivan, John Sisk & Son

E+I focuses on supplying power solutions to data centers and other major commercial installations. Hudock believes that this technology is particularly suited to modular delivery. “Modular power units are built and tested in a factory-controlled environment to comply with the project specification. The portable power solutions are then shipped to site, fully built, tested, and ready for immediate installation,” he tells DCD. He continues: “The bespoke nature of modular data center design provides a solution for everyone, with options for infrastructure to be housed in enclosed switch rooms or on an open-frame power skid, each with their own applications.”

Hudock believes that modular construction can, ultimately, help to speed up deployments.

From the data center to bio pharma hubs The data center sector, arguably, hasn’t always led the construction industry when it comes to modular construction.

However, much of the data center sector, adds O’Keeffe, has been focused on modularizing some of the more heavyweight technical aspects of data center construction, such as electrical infrastructure and cooling. “We’ve seen more and more elements like that being pre-fabricated,” he says.

For construction firm John Sisk & Son, maximizing the level of modular construction in any build makes good sense when the building is located in inhospitable climes.

It has been involved in a major data center development in northern Sweden, says Diarmuid O’Sullivan, Director of Ireland and Europe at John Sisk & Son, where the climate severely limits construction activities in the winter, such as pouring concrete (and expecting it to set properly).

“If you’re working in the Arctic Circle, prefabricating items in a factory environment can be very successful, especially if you can do it close by, as well, and not have major shipping

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costs to contend with,” says O’Sullivan. Local facilities can also help add valuable local knowledge, he says.

“In northern Sweden, temperatures can go to as low as minus-30 degrees Celsius. In that project, we basically found some warehouses and rented them in advance of knowing exactly what we were going to do, but we and our partners knew that, during the Swedish winter, we wouldn’t be able to work in the field,” says O’Sullivan.

A number of elements for that project could then be pre-built throughout the winter in the relative warmth and shelter of the warehouses, and stored until they could be constructed on-site. These included precast elements of the building, as well as the mechanical and electrical containment that could be delivered to site and lifted into position.

Ultimately, the project succeeded, he continues, because of good planning up-front.

“It’s a matter of having the right people sitting around the table, looking at the project and learning from previous lessons: Have we got any ideas in our knowledge library and in the heads of the specialists that we can bring to the table? “

“The efficiencies gained through the introduction of modular data centers simply cannot be matched through traditional brick and mortar construction,” Robert Hudock, E+I Engineering

In John Sisk & Son’s major Northern Sweden project, the company’s planning included getting good people over to Sweden one year before the project started.

“One of the things we are looking at were the options and opportunities to bring modularization and factory assembly solutions to the table in that region,” says O’Sullivan.

“That sometimes means investing some money for people see modularization projects for themselves.”

In the process, John Sisk & Son was able to bring knowledge and expertise it had acquired from outside the data center sector to bear on the project, just as it transfers knowledge the company acquires from the data center to retail and other major sectors.

“We have a huge amount of experience across our business, and not just in data centers.

There are lots of great ideas from our own internal knowledge management, and learning of different teams, and then going and doing specific reconnaissance,” says O’Sullivan.

The big shift Large-scale modular construction and the necessity of sustainability are increasingly

coming to the fore.

“There is now an onus on the industry to make net-zero happen and to work out what we can do to support the green economy,” Hanley Energy’s Managing Director Dennis Norden says.

Modular construction, he adds, is part of that mindset shift and not just in the data center sector.

“What we’re finding now is that a lot of architects and, indeed, a lot of companies – pharmaceutical companies, high-tech advanced manufacturing, even food manufacturers – are all recognizing that this is a far smarter way of building. Rather than constructing huge plant rooms with the cost associated with all of that, they can pre-order, spec’ out what they need, and can have it built off-site and delivered, drastically reducing their time to market,” says Norden.

Furthermore, adds Senior Director of Mission Critical at contractor PM Group Mark Gillett, off-site construction can also help to more accurately track the carbon footprint of facilities’ construction stage, regardless of whether it’s data centers, pharma factories, or shopping centers.

The twofold imperative HOW BIG DATA, AI, AND AR CAN TRANSFORM DATA CENTER DEVELOPMENT

“Technology can also be utilized by high-energy users to better serve the wider society,” Sinéad Hickey, John Sisk & Son

Digitization continues to transform how we work and live. As the role of technology in day-to-day life deepens, however, so does the amount of energy it consumes. Continued digitization of industries such as agriculture and automobiles further compounds this.

Innovations in technology also provide us with sustainability enablers, allowing organizations to shrink carbon footprints and manage energy more efficiently. We are facing, therefore, what Accenture has referred to as a twofoldimperative; not only must we make technology itself more environmentally friendly but we must also deploy the technology responsibly and effectively to become more sustainable.

For contractors and engineers delivering projects for energy-intensive industries, this requires new paradigms of thinking; how can

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technology enable more sustainable designbuild strategies and deliver longer-term sustainability without compromising speed and cost restraints?

Again, for Ireland’s contractors, engineering, and advisory companies at the heart of global hyperscale and MTDC design-build and operation, there are lessons to be learned in terms of the way technology is being utilized on these projects.

Digitization of design build We have already seen in this Ebook key insights shared on stakeholder engagement and collaboration across the value chain. We have encouraged deeper thinking around material choices and Scope 2&3 emissions, and the need for greater transparency and standards to provide reference points for design.

This more holistic approach and alignment around sustainability, however, will have a limited impact if Building Information Management is not modernized, digitized and providing a golden thread of information to drive safety, efficiency and sustainability.

As Kieran Beggan, CEO of Fexillon, told us: “Digitizing supply chains is key. Understanding information from civil, architectural,

FPO Expert insight: DCD>Talks Digitizing designbuild with Kieran Beggan, Fexillon

What is a digital twin?

A digital twin is a virtual copy of a building such as a data center - whether planned or already built - that will provide detailed simulations of how that building will perform and operate during its lifetime.

Though still a maturing space, digital twins offer a way for organizations to build data centers more efficiently and sustainably from the outset.

Through these complete digital doppelgängers, firms can optimize how their facility is designed, understand how it will operate, and spot potential issues before a single server is installed.

groundworks, mechanical and electrical from the whole envelope drives more sustainable decision-making and greater efficiency in building at speed. Software-as-a-service helps drive this forward and provide a single source of truth.”

Quality up-to-date data can reduce mistakes,

drive operational knowledge-transfer and create additional circularity but although it may seem straightforward, estimates suggest that by project completion, typically 30 percent of the information on a building is lost.

Siloed decision-making and manual processes can contribute to this.

As Beggan notes, digital software and dashboards not only make it easy for customers but it “streamlines the handoff, providing the owner with very detailed information on the building and creating much more sustainable models for how data moves across the supply chain and into operating procedures and onboarding.”

The importance of this golden thread was echoed by Justin Keane, Director of Digital Delivery, Offsite Manufacturing and Quality, at European contractor Mercury Engineering: “We are now Tier 1 certified from ISO 19650 which further contributes to applying these practices across other industries and ensures not just more efficiency but less waste.”

Lessons from self-build hyperscalers and MTDC projects here can also be utilized in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors for example where a golden thread is equally important - if you think about patient records

“Most of the modern data centers built today incorporate a digital engineering model into the design stage and extend the use of the model into the construction - and increasingly into the operational stage,” Callum Faulds, Linesight

and data there also.

Simulation and sustainability In addition to digitizing BIM, Keane notes that tech and tools allowing us to look into the future - like digital twins - can deliver projects with far less waste. “Issues can be fixed really quickly in a virtual environment and this drives not just efficiency but sustainability.”

Digital twins for data centers allow you to layout the architecture, mechanical and engineering systems, cooling, power connectivity, and the weight-bearing capability of the raised floor. Such simulation software allows companies to predict, visualize, and quantify the impact of any change in their data center prior to implementation. For similar mission-critical design-build projects these principles can be similarly applied.

As Mark Gillett, Senior Director of MissionCritical at contractor PM Group explains, it not only reduces operational risk but “allows all stakeholders to come together, analyze scenarios and therefore ultimately, drive better utilization and sustainability.”

When combined with technologies such

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as virtual or augmented reality, a digital twin can show facilities in full glory prior to construction and aid the building process.

Earlier this year, PM Group announced it was deploying XYZ Reality’s AR product Holosite during the design and construction of one of Europe’s largest hyperscale data centers in Denmark, to achieve not just cost and time savings but “optimization of sustainable elements.” Again, Justin Keane agrees: “Mercury’s digital edge philosophy uses tech like [Microsoft] Hololens and visors to ensure that everything is working correctly so when it is brought onsite, installation and deployment is easy and there is no waste.”

Benefits of digital twins after construction When combined with DCIM (data center infrastructure management), digital twins offer a way for companies to understand and optimize the effect of hardware changes on the profile of the data center, and the same data can be used to help predict and automate operations.

“Most of the modern data centers built today incorporate a digital engineering model into the design stage and extend the use of the model into the construction - and increasingly into the operational stage,” says Callum Faulds, Director at Linesight UK. “The digital twin, integrated with management tools such as DCIM to capture the current state live data of the actual data center can then be used to simulate and predict, visualize and quantify the impact of any change in the data center prior to implementation to mitigate the risk of disruption or failure. The same can be done in other high-energy industries like automobiles for example for both QA and fault-prediction.

“With the availability of real-time data from all the major components in the entire ecosystem and a system with a machine learning algorithm in place, the data center could learn the optimum temperatures at different times of day and at different IT utilization levels and automatically adjust the cooling systems accordingly.”

Furthermore, it would keep track of the data and continually refine the algorithm to make it more effective over time.

As data centers look to become more automated and the industry aims towards remotely operated ‘lights out’ facilities, digital twins embedded into DCIM will become an imperative.

AI & Automation As Keane points out, DCIM is evolving and the use of machine learning within the data center industry is nothing new but the smart use of data allows “operators to take a more proactive response to enhance the lifecycle and again, ensure equipment is used more sustainably.”

throughout the pandemic are likely to remain in the future.”

Machine learning can also be deployed in addition to AI to automatically understand load patterns and predict when fluctuations will occur, as well as for infrastructure operations; for example for load transfer or intelligent switching between redundant and resilient equipment. This frees up the operational resource to concentrate on maintenance and repairs rather than plant running cycles. It is therefore also far more sustainable.”

Innovations driving circularity

For the hyperscalers and public cloud providers, AI & ML are already part and parcel of data center deployment and operations.

Google has previously detailed how it uses DeepMind AI for cooling and was able to cut PUE by 15 percent through the automatic management of variables including fans, cooling systems, and windows. The company has also used DeepMind for predicting the output of wind turbines up to 36 hours in advance, which it used to predict power needs for its facilities connected to wind farms.

Callum Faulds, Director at Linesight UK, adds that AI has been useful during the pandemic to keep minimal numbers of staff on-site and keep those that are there safe.

“Safety and security applications such as automatic temperature checks, touchless authorization, payment and control systems, and traffic monitoring, which played a vital role

We have spoken about the importance of digitizing design-build and automating operations to drive sustainability initiatives, but there is also plenty of inspiration to be found in how data centers are utilizing evolving technologies to create greater options for circularity. As Sinéad Hickey, Head of Sustainability – Ireland & Europe at construction and property company John Sisk & Son, noted: “Technology can also be utilized by high-energy users to better serve the wider society.”

Some data centers, for example, are reusing waste heat through district heating schemes connected to homes or offices. QScale plans

Expert insight: DCD>Talks Digitizing engineering with Justin Keane, Mercury

to place greenhouses on its campuses in Quebec, Canada, and use the excess heat for agriculture.

“We want to contribute to the food autonomy of the province with a potential of 400 hectares of greenhouses for the first campus,” said Founder Martin Bouchard. “In Lévis, we have adjacent agricultural land which is equivalent to 80 football fields, enough to produce 2,880 tonnes of raspberries and 83,200 tonnes of tomatoes.”

Green Mountain in Norway is providing heat to both a land-based lobster farm and a trout farm, allowing them to dispense with expensive water heating and recycling systems.

German data center firm Windcloud set up a similar scheme sending its excess heat to an algae farm. Researchers at Lancaster University are looking at modular data centers which dry coffee beans in markets such as Costa Rica.

Eoin Gilsenan, Business Development Manager at Irish water treatment solutions provider Whitewater, commented that industries like agriculture and pharmaceuticals are particularly well-positioned to benefit, stating “the maximization of resources, collaboration, and innovation is driving big opportunities here.”

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Lessons learned; tech as an enabler It is clear from these insights that technology will play a key role for engineering and contracting businesses not only to meet the increasing need for speed and cost-saving but critically to ensure greater sustainability on the road to net-zero. Key takeaways include: A golden thread of information can not only help ensure sustainability across the supply chain but drive operating efficiencies and greater recycle/reuse opportunities.

Embracing new tech such as digital twins in the planning stages will reduce wastage and drive more sustainable design and operation.

Transforming data into actionable insight is key - enhancing lifecycle and reducing costs.

Greater automation can drive gains across operational efficiency making enormous cumulative differentials. Keep analyzing and iterating.

Think more holistically - how can you make excess heat more useful and better serve the community you are in?

Ensuring data centers use water responsibly IN AN AGE OF CLIMATE VOLATILITY, HIGH WATER USAGE WITHIN ENERGY INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES HAS PRESENTED ITS OWN UNIQUE CHALLENGES FOR OWNERS AND OPERATORS

When we think of the data center in terms of sustainability, power often takes up the lion’s share of the conversation. That’s missing a whole other debate, with the average data center guzzling anywhere between 500,000 and five million liters of water a day, according to utility Irish Water.

With water scarcity now a global issue and data centers needing so much of it, these facilities have come under public scrutiny.

Also increasingly being looked at are the huge amounts of power required for water

treatment.

With sustainable awareness mounting, and many customers now demanding contracts with sustainability baked in from the get-go, the industry at large is standing up and taking notice in other ways; innovating – as it always does – to overcome the threat of the water shortages, and reduce the energy waste of needless water treatment.

The contractors we have gathered insights from over the course of this Ebook are

The average data center guzzles anywhere between 500,000 and five million liters of water a day, according to utility Irish Water.

How do data centers use water?

The unit for WUE is L/kWh, yet this offers a limited view because it only includes the water consumed on-site. As mentioned above, water from electricity generation is also important for understanding the total data center footprint.

Data centers consume water in two main ways: indirectly through electricity generation (traditionally thermoelectric power) and directly through cooling. For some perspective, a medium-sized data center (say around 15MW) uses about as much water as three averagesized hospitals.

Hyperscalers like Facebook and Microsoft are already actively monitoring WUE. Facebook actually reports its WUE ratio, making it publicly available, and is relatively transparent about its overall environmental footprint, featuring real time dashboards for its Lulea, Forest City, and Prineville data centers.

So, how do (and how are) data centers going about lessening this rather astronomical impact?

Furthering this transparency, Facebook has open sourced the code for its WUE (and PUE) dashboards, with the view that other data centers will use the code to create their own.

supporting this mission – the work being done in data centers, again, provides a useful example of some best-practice.

WUE (water usage effectiveness) Water use in electricity generation Efficiency is core to sustainability, but without an understanding of how a system behaves and compares to others, it is hard to know how to improve. Enter WUE. In comparison to PUE (power usage effectiveness), the watery version of this metric is slightly later to the party, having been introduced in 2011. But where calculating PUE is relatively simple (power in/compute out) WUE is slightly more complex due to the two types of water consumption that need to be considered (i.e., power generation and cooling.)

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The electricity used to power a data center requires a significant volume of water. Power plants burn fuel, which heats water, generating steam to turn a turbine that generates electricity. Hydroelectricity also relies on water (although it doesn’t ‘consume it’ due to the fact it can be passed on to downstream users.)

Solar and wind do not involve water during generation – in this case, the manufacturing process contributes to most of the water footprint. Therefore, if data center electricity was generated by wind and solar, at least in the main, then the water footprint would be

significantly reduced.

Unfortunately, due to the intermittent nature of solar, wind, and weather in general, this renewable generation isn’t yet possible 100 percent of the time, but the industry is certainly getting there.

This is helped along exponentially by a snowballing shift to the cloud. Hyperscale facilities are expected to increase from approximately 600 data centers globally in 2021, to 890 in 2025, at a CAGR of 9.76 percent. And with cloud vendors touted as some of the largest purchasers of renewable energy (IEA, 2019) we’re making substantial headway in this field, which is good news, since switching to renewables is currently the only way to reduce the impact of water consumption in this area.

Water use in data center cooling Heat is the arch-nemesis of the server, and IT equipment generates a lot of it, therefore in order to operate efficiently, equipment must be kept cool at all times.

To help conserve water for keeping temperatures down, raising the chiller temperature from the usual 7-10°C to 18-20°C

can help reduce operational expenses by around 40 percent, thanks to the reduction in energy required for cooling. When designing new data centers, using smaller chillers can reduce capex by up to 30 percent (Frizziero, 2016).

That said, when cooling a facility, better, more energy-efficient equipment really is the piece de resistance. For example, low-impact, direct liquid-cooling systems could be utilized to limit the active movement of air over the servers.

This would eliminate the need to cool the entire data hall, reducing both energy consumption and cost.

According to the UN, we are currently facing a 40 percent gap in freshwater supply and demand by 2030. Luckily, data centers are getting increasingly good at replacing wasteful, traditional water evaporation cooling systems with more innovative closed-loop counterparts.

These systems use recycled water rather than fresh, to reduce the burden on local water systems.

The use of recycled water is something Google is implementing where it can (as well as the use of seawater) to avoid using drinking water and draining local supplies, whilst also ensuring the water used is recirculated through its cooling systems as many times as possible.

Some Google and Microsoft data centers have even gone a step further; operating with cooling via ambient air temperatures since

2009, but for those facilities operating in hot environments, this, unfortunately, isn’t an option. But, if you have the climate, use it to your advantage.

One of BT’s Dublin data centers recently underwent an efficiency upgrade via PM Group, involving the installation of two dry coolers to allow the facility to avail of free cooling and pre-cool the chilled water return prior to entering the existing air cooled chiller thus increasing its efficiency and reducing energy costs.

sectors too (where water often has a high carbon content.)

“These data center applications are applicable to other industries like agriculture,” says Gilsenan. “For example, DigiPlex in their deployments are adding value to the local town by harvesting rainwater and helping the capture of water add value, not just for the data center, but the community. This maximization of resources and collaboration is a big opportunity.”

Quality control

Water quality and treatment For those operators that don’t have the luxury of purchasing more renewables, ambient cooling temperatures, a casual retrofit, or move to the cloud, help is at hand.

DCD sat down with Eoin Gilsenan, Business Development Manager at Whitewater Ireland, a company with over 90 years of experience and expertise helping to meet the complex water demands of not only hyperscalers, but enterprise facilities too.

Whitewater, and companies like it, produce high-quality, compliant water treatment solutions, not only for data centers, but healthcare, pharmaceutical, and municipal

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The modus operandi of any data center is to operate as efficiently as possible. And without water, that can’t happen. Just like we humans can’t survive without water, nor can a data center.

“In the water industry, water is never just water, it has to be of a certain quality for a certain application, whether that be pharma-grade water, water that can be reused, or as we call it, ‘cycles of concentration’ three to five ideally.

So, we’re really trying to maximize the use of every cubic meter of water, before it has to be discharged from the site,” says Gilsenan.

The key metric when it comes to water treatment is conductivity. This should be

around 100 micro siemens per centimeter (µs/ cm). Anything ‘sweeter’ than that, i.e, purer, can in fact have a less than desirable effect.

“Water can be quite aggressive at a very low conductivity range and can actually eat away at some of the binding of the cooling tower packing.” So, you may manage to achieve high cycles of concentration using purer water, but you’ll be damaging your cooling systems in the process, which appears counterintuitive.

But no matter how many times you manage to reuse your water, there is always going to be a waste cycle, including evaporation. So the goal here is to ultimately minimize that waste cycle and just take off the really high concentrated

“True engineering and smart use of technology is key to helping clients achieve their sustainability goals,” Eoin Gilsenan, Whitewater

waste, allowing only the good quality water to proceed.

Gilsenan adds: “True engineering and smart use of technology is key to helping clients achieve their sustainability goals.”

Whitewater has developed a system called the ‘Mem Cloud,’ a membrane process that will actually treat rainwater, whilst dealing with blowdown recovery, all in a single process. The idea being: get the water ready for optimal use, then when used, take that water back in, and bring the clean water back to the head of the works.

“Wastewater can be an opportunity,” says Gilsenan. “What sources are we utilizing and how do we capture it and store it to become more efficient? Membrane technology is ideally suited here and harvesting systems like these can be applied across many industries.”

This membrane technology is a testament to the innovation constantly emanating from this industry. “Microsoft in the US for example are looking at wastewater plants, and by treating it, it becomes suitable for data center applications. These options are also open to other industries with the right mindset,” adds Gilsenan.

Expert insight: DCD>Talks Water usage with Eoin Gilsenan, Whitewater

Future thinking As a trailblazer for sustainable solutions, Microsoft is also continuing its research into liquid immersion cooling to help reduce its dependency on water, which the company has pledged to reduce by 95 percent by 2024.

But it won’t stop there; in September 2020 the company announced plans to become ‘water positive’ (i.e. to replenish more than it uses) by 2030 and these data center efforts will be a key part of that goal.

Hydrogen is also a technology Microsoft and other companies are currently bringing to the fore when it comes to reducing water usage and GHG emissions. When combusted, hydrogen produces zero greenhouse gas emissions and is flexible enough to be used in existing natural gas power plants, which can be converted to burn hydrogen. Microsoft is currently experimenting with hydrogen fuel cells as a replacement for diesel backup, although this isn’t the only alternative the company is looking into.

“We are certainly looking at other fuels. I expect in that 2030 timeframe there will be a

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number of different solutions, including other liquid fuels,” says Mark Monroe, Principal Engineer at Microsoft’s Datacenter Advanced Development Group.

A shared responsibility With tech giants like Microsoft investing in sustainable solutions that are open to all, perhaps rather than condemning the data center for being some sort of resource guzzling monster, perhaps it’s time to follow the leader, and recognize the steps already taken (and still being taken) by the sector.

Data centers not only keep the world as we know it operational, but are making some of the biggest sustainable strides around - across construction, supply chains, energy, and water usage.

This is made possible by an army of enterprises, contractors, and developers who can transform not only the sector, but the entire construction and operational chain.

Together, the industry can play a key role in the energy transition - helping the world as a whole.

Learn more from our expert interviews LEARN MORE WITH OUR EXPERT INTERVIEWS WITH DESIGN CONTRACTORS

DCD>Talks Digitizing design-build with Kieran Beggan, Fexillon

DCD>Talks Energy management with Dennis Nordon, Hanley Energy

DCD>Talks Benchmarks and supply-chain management with Rebecca Reilly, Collen Construction

DCD>Talks Digitizing engineering with Justin Keane, Mercury

DCD>Talks Water usage with Eoin Gilsenan, Whitewater

DCD>Talks Sustainable designbuild with Gary O’Keeffe, Ethos Engineering

Thank you to our contributors E+I Engineering is a leader in the engineering of electrical switchgear and power distribution systems. With manufacturing facilities in Ireland, USA and UAE, E+I Engineering have experience of delivering data center projects globally. E+I Engineering manufacture a range of intelligent data center infrastructure to maximise floorspace and improve operational efficiency.

Ethos is Ireland’s largest Mechancial Electrical consultancy and one of Europe’s leading experts in data center design, Sustainability, Urbanism, Global Tech and Digital Services (Smart Buildings). With an HQ in Dublin, a regional office in Galway and work sites in 14 EMEA countries across Europe and Africa, Ethos with its “Engineering Wow” philosophy has an absolute commitment to treat each project as completely bespoke with no pre ordained solution.

H&MV Engineering is a trusted name in the electric power transmission industry. Established in 1997, we have quickly become a leading specialist in high voltage Transmission and Distribution systems. Our leading position in the market allows us to expand our services worldwide – we’re currently present in EU, UK, Asia and South Africa, exploring further possibilities to expand and finding ways to leverage the experience we gain internationally.

Our main expertise is in the design and build of substations up to 420kV.

Hanley Energy are a globally recognized innovator in critical power and Energy Management solutions, headquartered in Ireland with divisional offices in the United States, Australia, Germany, South Africa, and the Nordics. Our core capabilities cover the design, development, supply, installation and commission of turnkey critical power and energy management solutions – from the power grid all the way to the data center IT rack.

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Whitewater is a water treatment solutions provider based in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. We have made our mark by producing high-quality and compliant water treatment systems for the Healthcare, Data Center, Industrial, Pharmaceutical and Municipal Sectors.

RKD is an international firm driven by design thinking. From the outset, our collective focus and strategic thinking enables us to design and realise architecture that works. We have a rich legacy dating back to our formation in 1913 and since then, we’ve established ourselves as one of the most diverse and effective architecture firms in Europe. Design connects and unifies our multi-sector approach. Our skilled team of experienced professionals collaborate to deliver projects which range in terms of type and complexity.

PM Group manage the design, construction and commissioning of high-tech facilities. Over 48 years, we’ve built our expertise working for the world’s leading pharma, food, data center and medical technology companies. To excel at the complex work we do, we always seek to understand our clients’ needs. At every level of our business, you will see a culture of honesty, openness, and flexibility. Our approach has led to long-term, trusted relationships with our clients. Projects range from pharma facilities in Belgium, complex infant nutritional plants to data centers in Ireland.

As a member of the Kingspan Group, Tate’s innovative products efficiently manage data center airflow to maximise energy efficiency while minimizing costs. Our wide range of products include Structural Ceiling Grids, Hot and Cold Aisle Containment, Directional Airflow Panels and Raised Access floors, that work together to maximize data center performance.

Collen Construction is a family-owned business established in 1810 with a strong reputation for building quality and excellence. The company has successfully tendered and negotiated projects for a range of clients including large multi-national corporations, private companies, local authorities and state authorities. We have established a reputation for providing complex projects on time and within budget.

Fexillon is an Enterprise Platform which supports the management and delivery of Buildings and Mission Critical Infrastructure, from Strategy through to Operations for Owner Operators. Our digital framework is based on established and emerging industry standards and supported by cutting edge technology and industry expertise. Our blue-chip customers are Owner Operators in mission critical sectors across High-Tech Cloud, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Education, Sports & Leisure, Public Sector and Commercial.

Linesight is a highly successful, global Cost and Project Management Consultancy with industry-leading expertise in our chosen fields. We have offices all over the world and we’re growing fast: scaling our existing operations and expanding into new markets. We work in exciting, innovative sectors with some of the world’s most powerful and prestigious companies, delivering major projects that make a difference: enabling new technologies, better healthcare, and contributing to a more sustainable built environment.

Mercury is a European contractor. We build and manage complex engineering projects that reimagine how people work and live in the built environment.

We believe that real innovation happens if you’re willing to be brave. Our determination and sharp focus enable us to deliver leading edge construction solutions across a range of key sectors, taking our clients to new territories they never thought possible.

John Sisk & Son is an innovative, international, construction and engineering business with long term vision and over 160 years in operation. Sisk employs approx. 1,900 people with extensive operations across Ireland, the United Kingdom and mainland Europe and is recognised by global clients as world leaders in safe delivery. Sisk delivers a full life-cycle approach to construction from planning and offsite construction, through delivery and fit-out with technology as a key enabler, and then managing and maintaining buildings efficiently throughout their lifespan.

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Meet Enterprise Ireland’s Construction Team Enterprise Ireland is the Irish Government’s trade and innovation agency. With 40 offices worldwide, our goal is to build successful business relationships between international companies and Irish partners. We represent a cluster of over 300 Irish companies operating around the world. As one of the world’s largest seed capital investors, we help develop a pipeline of Irish construction innovation. Our industry experts understand your requirements, then match you with a shortlist of Irish construction partners. We make introductions to the right people in Irish construction companies, enhancing your buying experience.

John Hunt UK

Karin Angus Nordics

Richard Engelkes Benelux

Tim Flache Germany

Vincenz Wagner Switzerland

Alix Derigny France

Bartosz Siepracki Poland

Alberto Cisterna Spain & Portugal

Roberto Bettuzzi Italy

Marisa Mannion US

Nerissa Govender Sub Saharan Africa

Mohammad Afif Middle East