Sustainable scale: The green data centre

Becoming a sustainable business requires continual adjustments in daily operations, there is no big green button that will ‘solve’ the multiple challenges it faces. Making these adjustments in every corner is how companies have tackled the ‘unsolvable’ sustainability tasks such as heavy-industry manufacturing, aviation and data centre operations.

Data centres currently consume up to 2% of the world’s electricity and that consumption is expected to grow to 4% by 2030, largely driven by the rise of AI.¹

Sourcing renewable energy and building energy efficiency are critical tasks for data centre operators in an increasingly competitive market. As their clients seek greater reductions on scope 3 emissions, the carbon cost of running a data centre is thrown into the spotlight and operators must demonstrate their sustainability.

As the world inches toward greater electrification, the demand for electricity is at risk of outstripping the supply. In the tech sector alone, we are heading for ‘data doomsday’ where the demand for electricity to power data processing will outstrip the total global energy supply by 2033.²

One method that data centre operators use to tackle this challenge is focusing on Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). PUE describes a data centre’s total energy consumption divided by the energy used by the computing equipment. The industry average is between 1.55 and 1.59 PUE³ meaning the computing equipment uses around 63% of the data centre’s total energy consumption.

DC Tuas will be Singtel’s largest data centre in Singapore with a full load capacity of 58 Megawatts (MW). Despite its size, the data centre is expected to reach 1.23 PUE at full load, which is well below the industry average.⁴

It is not just PUE that builds efficiency. The combination of optimised land, power, and water use helps Singtel build sustainability into its data centre offering and reduce overall GHG emissions, which, in turn, offers benefits to clients.

As well as PUE, data centres measure water usage effectiveness (WUE). Similar to PUE, WUE divides the total water used by the data centre by the water used to cool the computing equipment. 

Leading Asian Data Centre operator Nxera is aiming to build the lowest PUE and highest WUE to make it the most sustainable data centre platform.⁵ It will achieve this with a combination of water conservation activities, including a cooling tower with seven cycles of concentration, water-efficient fittings, private meters, water leak detection systems and rainwater harvesting from the rooftop.

Since just a 1 MW data centre uses 25.5 million litres of water per year for cooling, water preservation must be part of all sustainable data centre conversations.⁶

In addition to drawing on renewable energy sources, data centres can become their own source of energy. With large, closed roof space, the centres are ideal for solar panel photovoltaic (PV) installation and, by reducing the distance from source to usage, can minimise the energy loss associated with power transportation. 

With some of the longest daily hours of sunshine in APAC ⁷, Singapore and Australia data centres are perfect for PV installations: 

Singapore: At DC West, solar panels cover the linkway between the guardroom and main building. In one year alone, this and other installations in Singapore are expected to generate 665MWh of solar energy.

Australia: Optus installed solar PV panels on the rooftops at five sites. This provided 477kWp of generation capacity.⁴

Adding renewable energy sources to data centres ‘closes the loop’ of their environmental footprint and gets them closer to carbon neutrality. 

As PUE, renewable energy permeation and water efficiencies grow, data centre operators must look to their next opportunities for sustainability. Early trials into these opportunities include analysing the construction materials, use of space and biodiversity that is impacted by building data centres.

Innovations in data centre construction are drastically offsetting the carbon-cost of constructing new, purpose-built centres:

• Engineering giant Aurecon has been exploring opportunities for adding data centres into existing buildings such as offices and car parks left vacant after the shift to hybrid working.⁸

• US company Nautilus built the world’s first floating data centre using river water as part of its outside cooling loop.⁹

In the future, we will also see more clients incorporating edge computing into the data centre sustainability ecosystem as it reduces the energy associated with long-distance data transmission.

Singtel’s sustainable data centres are building hyper-connected and AI-ready economies. Ready to learn more? Contact us