SUSTAINABLE DATA CENTERS AND CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURES

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS & SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainable Data Centers
and Cloud Infrastructure

Operating computers, networks, and data centers comes along with vast amounts of electricity consumption. As a result, information and communication technologies are responsible for two percent of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions.

The 33.7 million servers which are currently installed worldwide consumed approximately 235 billion kWh of electrical energy in 2012 – this equals 1.3 percent of the worldwide electricity demand.

The growing demand for data centers, the energy to power them (and keep them cool), and real solutions to climate change have created a challenging operating environment. Consumers, investors and regulators are increasingly scrutinizing how companies manage this hidden but critical piece of modern infrastructure. To win the transparency in data centers battle, Meta provides an interactive map of their data centers and Google has created a multi-episode series of “behind the scenes” videos about their approach to data centers.

The Sustainable Data Center

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews provides the graphic below with tactics for sustainable data centers which include:

the use of clean and renewable energy
the use of “free cooling” resources such as waterways
waste heat utilization (servers generate heat which can be used)
the use of sustainable design principles to minimize energy consumption such as virtual machines (VM)

graphic showing different sustainable attributes of a data center

Case Study: Target’s Data Centers

Target’s data centers are a critical part of the company’s business and operational infrastructure. As a part of its commitment to sustainability, Target set a goal of increasing its percentage of ENERGY STAR-certified buildings from nine percent in 2009 to 75 percent in 2016. To help meet its sustainability goals and improve data center operations, Target’s Technology Center Engineering Team conducted a series of cost-effective energy efficiency upgrades on two 45,000-square-foot data centers in Minnesota: Target’s Brooklyn Park facility, which was built in 2001, and its Elk River facility, which was built in 2007.

Scott Hovet, data center engineer, described the shift in attitude in an EPA Energy Star report on the project: “Our team developed a passion for managing our cooling technologies as mission-critical delivery, not settling for simple cooling of our IT infrastructure. Therefore, energy efficiency became a byproduct of precise technology management, which led us to perform an efficiency audit on the entire data center.” As a result of the efficiency upgrades, Target was the first company to have two data centers earn the ENERGY STAR building certification.

They took the following actions:

Installed variable frequency drives (VFDs) on air handling units and exhaust fans
Reduced temperatures on generators
Installed timers and efficient lighting
Turned off unloaded transformers

Results?

Target’s data center retrofits led to savings of (?) more than 5.8 million KWh annually and, on average, paid back in 1.4 years, after considering utility rebates also. The installation of VFDs accounted for 79 percent of the savings realized by the efficiency upgrades. The annual carbon emission reduction achieved through these efforts is the equivalent of taking 800 cars off the road.

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