From handling banking transactions to the latest AI models, data centres form the backbone of the economy. But data centres are also notorious energy hogs, consuming around 40 terawatt hours of electricity per year - a figure that makes up around 12% of the UK’s total electricity consumption. To ensure that data centres remain sustainable, as well as avoid periods of downtime, considerable changes will have to be made in the near future.
At CFP Energy, we’re at the forefront of helping data centres transition to cleaner energy. We can help you access green certificates like Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGOs) or Guarantees of Origin (GOs) to prove the use of renewable electricity, while helping you lower your Scope 2 emissions to enhance your social corporate responsibility.
To see how we can lower your emissions, contact one of our energy specialists today.
What Makes a Data Centre 'Green'?
A green data centre optimises performance while ensuring sustainable operation. Rather than an afterthought, intelligent energy management is prioritised from the outset.
This means taking into account environmental factors at every stage of the process - from the initial construction phase to ongoing energy optimisation and year-to-year operational audits.
By maximising the energy efficiency of the data centre at every stage of its development in this way, data centre managers avoid costly retrofits and complex upgrades later on.
Key Elements of Green Data Centres
Exceptional Energy Efficiency
Green data centres are distinct in maximising performance. This means implementing efficient IT equipment, smart power systems, and enhanced infrastructure.
The standard method of computing energy efficiency in data centres is Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). Developed by The Green Grid, this metric determines how much power is earmarked for computing versus how much energy is taken up by non-IT infrastructure, such as heating and lighting.
In practice, traditional data centres (i.e. data centres that haven’t attempted to optimise their energy usage) often hit PUE ratings of 2.0 or worse, meaning half their power gets wasted.
Modern green facilities, meanwhile, according to the UpTime Institute, tend to target 1.1 to 1.3, with some approaching the theoretical perfect score of 1.0.
Renewable Energy Supply
Clean electricity powers data centres through a mix of energy sources, including solar, wind, and hydroelectric.
Some data centres generate renewable power on-site via solar panels and wind turbines, others secure clean energy through power purchase agreements, while some use renewable energy certificates to offset consumption.
Whatever the renewable source, clean energy supports decarbonisation by eliminating fossil fuel dependence.
Sustainable Cooling Methods
Traditional cooling systems consume substantial energy in conventional data centres and, as such, contribute to CO2 emissions where non-sustainable sources power the facilities.
Green data centres, by comparison, address this challenge through free air cooling, liquid cooling systems, and advanced immersion cooling technologies. These approaches significantly reduce energy consumption while often eliminating water usage, delivering environmental and operational benefits together.
Resource Management
Water conservation gets serious attention through Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) tracking, waste reduction (especially electronic waste), and sustainable building materials. This extends beyond construction to equipment lifecycle management and circular economy principles, making sure that nothing that can be potentially reused or upcycled is thrown away.
Waste Heat Recovery
The processors inside data centres can generate thermal energy to warm entire buildings. District heating networks can help abate these thermal emissions by absorbing data centre waste heat directly.
Local businesses, housing developments, and even data centres can benefit from heat recovery. A data centre built by Microsoft in Denmark
for instance, showed that waste heat could be used to heat 6,000 homes in the near vicinity, proving the case for reusable waste heat.
Why the Focus on Green Data Centres?
The drive towards green data centres stems from a variety of compelling factors that align business objectives with environmental responsibility.
Energy costs, for instance, represent a substantial operational expense of a data centre's running costs. Improved efficiency and renewable energy adoption can deliver significant savings while making future costs more predictable - a crucial factor in long-term planning.
Promoting corporate sustainability is another important factor. Businesses that run or utilise data centres are now subject to much more stringent sustainability expectations, particularly as customers and investors examine environmental credentials more closely than ever before.
There is also the shifting regulatory landscape to consider. Mandatory reporting obligations, such as the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and, for some companies, SECR regulations, mean that data centre operators must ensure regulatory alignment to avoid penalties for non-compliance.
The Future of Green Data Centres
Recent technological shifts are changing the landscape of data centre management, reshaping how we think about sustainability, and how the industry plans for the future.
AI workloads, for instance, make data centre management particularly difficult. As AI demand increases, data centres will need more computational power, faster processors, and improved workload management just to maintain current efficiency levels.
This means data centres must move quickly to stay ahead of these challenges, adopting diverse renewable portfolios, as well as smart grid connections, to ensure clean electricity availability matches actual consumption levels.
But some changes can be implemented on-site to improve energy management immediately. For instance, according to LBNL, liquid cooling systems that transfer heat close to the source can significantly reduce energy consumption by improving ‘chiller’ performance and enabling more effective use of free cooling in comparison to traditional air-based cooling systems.
Waste heat management offers another established route to more effective energy use. By feeding waste heat into local heating networks and contributing to community energy resilience. Instead of waste, heat becomes a recyclable resource rather than a single instance byproduct.
Through these and other circular economy approaches, traditional data centres can become green data centres.
CFP Energy's Role in Green Data Centres
Renewable energy sourcing for data centres, where uptime, scalability, and cost control are often critical, can get complicated quickly.
We help operators navigate the complex range of energy products, from on-site solar installations to complex power purchase agreements (PPAs).
To secure cost-effective clean energy that works to high operational capacity and meets increasingly stringent UK and EU sustainability and reporting requirements, contact our energy team today.
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