How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint: Sustainability in Data Centers

The global rise in data center industry capacity has led to higher scrutiny of resource use by customers, the media and, more recently, regulators. Data center environmental sustainability is now a concern for managers and manufacturers. For this reason, the industry is making moves to change its approach and products.

Data center sustainability is starting with resource management by resource consumption. Sustainable Data Centers design their facilities to reduce the consumption of water and electricity via new technologies for water-cooling. Batteries and such BMS (Battery Management Systems) enable them to use fewer and longer lasting batteries. Meanwhile, they are working with local power utilities to find new ways to increase the green power they can use to lower their carbon footprint.

Uptime Institute states that more than 80% of data center operators surveyed track data center power consumption and they also are calculating their PUE.

Among everything, electricity is the single largest operational facility cost so it’s not a big surprise that larger data centers keep a close eye on their power consumption rates and their PUE. Although, most data center owners take sustainability seriously, there are some who put these important factors on the back burner. A simple solution for data center owners to appease cost-conscious customers is to work closely with local utilities to find more efficient way to deliver greener energy options to their product line. We then can pass the energy cost savings to the customers which in return reduce our carbon footprint.