Chairing the new look Sustainability Special Interest Group for the DCA

The winds are changing in the data centre sector and the DCA is responding by creating a new look Sustainability Special Interest Group which Techbuyer is chairing. For us, this is an opportunity to contribute to the wider conversation in the data centre sector. It marries well with our work as an associate partner in the CEDaCI project, increasing the scope beyond servers and limiting the creation of best practice to the UK. The first meeting of core members took place in July.

The Sustainability Makeover

In times gone by, the focus was on use phase energy efficiencies in the data centre sector. In particular, the relationship between how much energy is used to power a data centre and how much energy it takes to cool it. However, with so much work having been done on buildings design, great progress has been made on “Power Usage Effectiveness” (PUE) and there is increasing awareness that this is only part of the story.

Other initiatives on the horizon include the use of renewable energy supplies in data centres, as well circular economic approaches to IT refresh and building design. Hyperscalers are making strides towards becoming carbon neutral – and in some cases carbon negative – with assessments of embodied energy in everything right down to packaging suppliers. There is also a growing appreciation on energy efficiency and the true cost of data.  

Why now?

Environmentalists are saying that climate change is increasing at such a fast rate such that it can no longer be mitigated by planting trees, and it will be irreversible by 2030. In May 2019, the UK became the first country to declare a Climate Change Emergency. Between 2016 and September 2019, more than 700 cities and eight countries did the same thing around the world. The data centre more than anything needs to be ready to make drastic changes now, not least because a lot of lower carbon models rely on digital solutions to deliver meaningful change.

Data transfer and storage enables remote working and virtual meetings. Machine learning will enable us to better predict weather patterns and therefore accelerate the use of wind and solar power. Smart manufacturing, which cuts down on waste during production processes, needs machine learning to make it work. All of this means a lot of zeros and ones being transmitted through several real life systems… and those systems have a real life cost in terms of material and energy use.

The EU is already pushing through laws like the Ecodesign Directive, Green Public Procurement criteria and Circular Economy Action Plan to develop more sustainable solutions to the way we buy and manage our IT hardware. With the UK leaving Europe, these pieces of work need either mirroring or adapting to the UK landscape. A major driver for the creation of a new sustainability group for the Data Centre Alliance is to facilitate that work.

What’s the plan?

Our first meeting in July confined the broad scope for the group. This includes optimising energy efficiency at use phase through understanding the effect of IT hardware, utilisation and virtualisation on energy draw; circular solutions for heat, power and IT load, circular solutions for the facilities, buildings and IT hardware (and therefore a reduction on scope three emissions), standards that can be used to support all this, and education measures for the industry. It is an ambitious remit but it needs to be. Plus, we will not be carrying this out alone.

Our next meeting in September will take circular solutions for IT hardware provision. On home ground for this one, Techbuyer will be inviting high level contacts from industry producing procedures and standards worldwide. This should help us formulate some answers on what best practice looks like and could be supported by relevant regulation and legislation in the UK. It ties into work both the DCA and Techbuyer are doing with Policy Connect and could inform inquiries by policy makers as time goes on. There is so much great work being done in this area at the moment and it is wonderful to be a part of it. For anyone who feels they can contribute to the special interest group and the wider conversation, please get in touch with us or the DCA to find out more.

Techbuyer is a sustainable IT solutions specialist. With our quality refurbishment process, we have prevented quality technology going to waste, and maximised the budgets of businesses and organisations around the world. We are proud to contribute to the circular economy and have contributed to a number of technical projects, research and industry publications, which you read more about here.