Schneider Electric: Enabling sustainable development of data centers with standardized and transparent ESG indicators

Date: Jan 10, 2025 Views: 904

　　Introduction: Under the "dual carbon" goal, the green economy has ushered in a booming development, and sustainable development has become an inevitable mission for enterprises. From the 2023 "Government Work Report" pointing out "strengthening ecological and environmental protection and promoting green and low-carbon development" to the recent establishment of the ESG special working body of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, driven by both policies and markets, environment, society and governance (ESG) are undoubtedly receiving attention and attention from all parties. For enterprises, actively practicing the ESG concept will further enhance sustainable development capabilities and promote high-quality development of enterprises.

　　ESG and Data Center Sustainable Development

　　At present, with the growing prosperity of the digital economy, data centers and digital infrastructure are growing exponentially, and their energy consumption and environmental impact are also gradually rising. A series of policies and regulations, customer and investor needs, and the increasing recognition that sustainable development is closely related to corporate growth expectations are driving data centers towards sustainable development. Data center stakeholders urgently need to plan and think about low-carbon and sustainable development issues in advance. Previously, Schneider Electric and 451 Research conducted a survey of more than 800 hosting companies around the world, and 97% of respondents said that their customers require sustainable development commitments in business cooperation.

　　Recent survey results show that although most companies and organizations have increased their attention to ESG reporting, the practice is relatively lagging behind. At the same time, Uptime Institute found that most organizations do not pay close attention to their ecological footprint. In order to better support data center operators and enable the industry to achieve its own sustainable development goals, Schneider Electric has created the first indicator framework for measuring the environmental sustainability of data centers.

　　The framework includes five key elements: energy, water, greenhouse gas emissions, waste, land and biodiversity, which are further refined into 23 key indicators under different sustainability framework systems. It is suitable for data center operators at different stages of sustainable development, such as primary, advanced and industry-leading, so as to help the industry measure and report the impact of data centers on the environment in a standardized way.

　　Key indicators

　　As the largest item in the operating costs of data centers, energy is the primary category that needs to be monitored and measured. The output of fossil fuels and renewable energy is affected by geography, and their prices fluctuate greatly. Therefore, maximizing energy efficiency is of great significance from the perspective of business and long-term environmental protection.

　　Second, greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon emissions caused by CO2 (carbon dioxide), CH4 (methane), PFC (perfluorinated compounds) and HFC (hydrofluorocarbons) are the main factors in climate change, and all business areas should take action and efforts to reduce such gas emissions. For example, SF6 is a greenhouse gas widely present in medium-voltage switchgear, and its greenhouse effect is 23,000 times that of the same amount of CO2. Therefore, Schneider Electric has developed and launched SF6-free products to effectively solve the above problems.

　　Water utilization is also a major focus. A 15MW data center consumes up to 360,000 gallons (1,363 tons) of water per day. Cooling towers and other evaporative cooling technologies are popular in the field of heat dissipation due to their high efficiency and powerful cooling capacity, but evaporative cooling also consumes a lot of water resources. Generally speaking, a 1MW data center using traditional evaporative cooling consumes 25 million liters of water per year.

　　In addition, data centers inevitably generate various wastes during the construction and operation phases, which often include hazardous materials that must be properly disposed of. Circular economy design methodology, Green Premium™ technology and better processes can improve data center sustainability, as can the recycling of end-of-life products such as uninterruptible power supply (UPS) batteries. Potential damage to land and biodiversity during the construction phase of data centers must be kept to a minimum, especially for projects and developers. Sustainability is not only about the data center facilities themselves, but also includes supporting renewable energy infrastructure such as solar panels and wind turbines.

　　When any of the above indicators are selected, the results that drive significant improvements in sustainability should be feasible and applicable to all regions as much as possible.

　　Energy consumption indicators

　　For example, the premise for dealing with energy-related issues is that data center operators measure the total energy consumption of their facilities, PUE and the proportion of renewable energy used. Renewable energy can be obtained locally, purchased from energy companies or signed long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs).

　　Based on the measurement results, the REF renewable energy factor can be calculated, which reflects the proportion of renewable energy in the total energy consumption of a location. A REF of 1 means that the energy used in the entire data center is renewable energy. Another key indicator is the energy recovery factor (ERF), and the standard ISO/IEC 30134-6 defines its calculation method. Based on the combination of various indicators, data center operators can be incentivized to improve overall energy efficiency, increase the use of renewable energy, and promote the development of a circular economy through measures such as waste heat recovery.

　　Greenhouse gas indicators

　　Globally, controlling carbon emissions is of great significance. Many internationally recognized protocols contain complex calculations that include carbon emissions from multiple sources, forming the basis for calculating other indicators such as carbon intensity and carbon utilization efficiency (CUE). CUE is related to IT load and allows data centers or other industries to compare carbon emissions in this way, which can play a role in site selection, planning, design and operation stages to measure the effect of continuous improvement.

　　Carbon offsets and carbon credits can be purchased by companies to offset carbon emissions, thereby encouraging companies to achieve carbon reduction in more dimensions. In addition, the matching of hourly supply and consumption will be used as a standard to measure operators' renewable energy generation and consumption.

　　Waste, water, land and biodiversity

　　For waste, key indicators include the total weight of waste generated by the data center from construction to operation; the total weight of waste sent to landfill; the weight of waste diverted from landfill through the circular economy (including reuse, manufacturing and recycling); and the waste conversion ratio, which is the ratio of the weight of recycled waste to the total weight of waste generated. The parameters created by the indicators can be used to compare different data centers and measure the improvement effect of waste reduction.

　　Measuring site water consumption is another key metric to include, and should include all water consumption for facility operations, including freshwater, recycled water, etc. Total energy water consumption measures the water used in the data center's energy use and can be used to optimize water consumption related to energy use. For example, water consumption caused by the use of evaporative cooling equipment will increase the total water consumption of the data center facility, but will reduce the energy use of the cooling system. This will not only reduce the water consumption of the power plant, but also provide a holistic perspective to better manage all water consumption related to operations.

　　In addition, although it is now generally accepted that data center land development should not affect the biodiversity of animal habitats, plants and microorganisms, this metric is still in its infancy and has not yet been standardized, which is expected to change in the future.

　　Determine the path forward with clear metrics

　　For companies that aim to collect and review sustainability metrics, there are a number of ways to effectively improve data center sustainability. The most obvious way is to set goals: to improve the sustainability performance of the data center or the entire organization, this can be achieved by achieving a challenging PUE, CUE or WUE target or reducing the amount of waste generated over a specific period of time. Metrics need to ensure that companies can report accurately and report on sustainability progress in a transparent and quantifiable way, making it possible to certify corporate efforts according to recognized standards.

　　As the demand for the industry continues to increase, the elasticity of the corresponding demand continues to expand. Data operators must consider the impact of their business decisions on the environment and prioritize standardized and sustainable implementation methods in their organizations. In order to promote the implementation of sustainable development in the data center industry, Schneider Electric has pioneered this set of environmental sustainability indicator frameworks, which aims to help the industry quantify sustainable development from qualitative concepts into detailed indicators, so that operators and the industry can comprehensively, quantitatively and standardizedly judge the sustainability process at different stages. This will help data center operators to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of their own sustainable initiatives and continuously adjust the operation strategies of data centers.
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