On Monday, French-listed multinational energy and utility automation company Schneider Electric released a comprehensive framework–which it’s calling a “first-of-its-kind”–for environmentally sustainable data centers. The framework proposes five areas for addressing environmental impact with key metrics for data center operators in various stages of sustainability evolution.
Schneider Electric notes that data centers, the backbone of the modern digital economy, are also responsible for up to two percent of the world’s carbon emissions, equivalent to that of the airline industry. As digital bandwidth and IT-sector electricity demand–and, not least, pressures from investors, regulators, shareholders, customers and employees–continue to grow, the company says the industry demands a “holistic and standardized” approach to environmental sustainability.
In response, Schneider’s Energy Management Research Center, a research arm established under the company in 2002 that has since published more than 200 vendor-neutral white papers and trade-off tools made available free of charge to the industry. The center consulted a variety of ESG experts, sustainability consultants, data center scientists, and data centre solution architects to develop actionable metrics across five key areas: energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water consumption, waste generation, and land/biodiversity protection.
“Environmental sustainability reporting is a growing focus for many data center operators,” said Pankaj Sharma, EVP in charge of Schneider Electric’s Secure Power Division. “Yet, the industry lacks a standardized approach for implementing, measuring, and reporting on environmental impact. Schneider Electric developed a holistic framework with standardized metrics to guide operators and the industry at large. Our intention with this framework is to improve benchmarking and progress toward environmental sustainability to protect natural resources for future generations.”
Last week, in connection with the Enlit Europe utility and energy convention in Milan, Schneider issued an emphatic statement endorsing the use of smart bi-directional grids – or Grids of the Future – to help the world halve its emissions by 2030 by removing 10Gt of CO2 per year and keeping within the 1.5C warming trajectory.
