Vertiv launches 'Guide to Data Center Sustainability'

According to a report by the International Energy Agency, data centres account for about 1 per cent of the global electricity demand. The report notes that the industry was able to limit the impact of capacity growth on the total energy consumption before 2020 by improving operating efficiency.

However, in 2020, global internet traffic surged by more than 40 per cent, and Market Intelligence projects a 13 per cent compound annual growth rate in data centre construction over the next five years. That trend, combined with an increased focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption, has led some operators to seek new solutions that increase equipment utilisation and drive out remaining inefficiencies, phase out water-intensive cooling technologies, and decrease their dependence on carbon-based energy sources.

“We’re seeing a sense of urgency by operators across the industry to reduce the impact of their operations on the environment, and this new resource is designed to help them do just that,” said TJ Faze, head of ESG strategy & engagement at Vertiv. “The focus on operational efficiency has enabled significant improvements, but new strategies and more intelligent systems are required to drive down emissions and water use as the industry continues to grow. As a provider of infrastructure solutions to enterprises, colocation and cloud providers, Vertiv is well-positioned to share best practices and new developments across these sectors.”

The industry movement has been led by huge hyper-scale operators who have set goals to become carbon-neutral or carbon-negative by the decade's end. These operators are taking the lead in advancing technologies that support these goals and developing a roadmap for the rest of the industry.

Many location providers are also moving to carbon-neutral and water-efficient operations to capitalise on market demand for data centre services that support their enterprise customers’ environmental goals. Likewise, enterprises are urged to address the impact of their on-premises data centres to support those goals.

Realising this dire need for sustainability-minded actions, Vertiv's new resource shares best practices and emerging technologies to help the industry advance toward net-zero operations.

The Guide to Data Center Sustainability provides guidance for operators on the business case for reducing environmental impact, how data centre infrastructure and complementary technologies are evolving to support higher utilisation and increased use of renewable energy, as well as resources, frameworks and metrics for implementing and measuring sustainability initiatives. Notably, the guide elaborates on several instances of best practices for designing and operating low-impact data centres.

Booming online work and increased internet entertainment pushed by the health crisis have pressured investors to find suitable land plots to set up data centres across Vietnam.

The Vietnamese data centre market stood at $858 million in 2020 and is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of over 14.64 per cent until 2026.

Singaporean businesses are increasingly investing in new data centres in Vietnam to serve the rising demand for data storage solutions in Vietnam.

Domestic and international investors are increasingly turning to alternatives in the Vietnamese market such as data centres and self-storage services to diversify their portfolios and enhance return.