Industry
Sustainability Services
Ecosystem-led Approach to Power Your Sustainability Strategy
HIGHLIGHTS
- Green data centers are driven by factors such as cutting costs, conserving water, and reducing emissions to achieve net zero goals.
- A company can choose between owned, outsourced, or hybrid data centers for a green DC initiative.
- For a green DC, it is essential to consider the facility’s design, energy source and usage, knowledge, and measurement systems, KPIs, asset lifecycle management, and water conservation.
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Sustainable IT ops
The digital age has created a massive demand for data storage and management. However, the growth of data centers in response to this demand is hurting the environment. According to the United Nations, the IT industry accounts for 2-3% of global emissions, which could rise to 14% by 2040. Many companies now recognize the role of IT in achieving their net zero goals, and CIOs are taking bold steps to improve the sustainability of their IT operations.
Industries such as telecommunications, banking, finance, insurance, and media and entertainment, which rely heavily on infrastructure, are building green data centers (DCs). Scientists are researching ways to reduce the power needed for data centers—cooling alone can account for up to 40% of their energy usage. Green DCs are driven by several factors, including cutting costs, conserving water, and reducing emissions to achieve net zero goals.
This paper provides practical guidance for companies transitioning to a green data center. The recommendations will help you streamline the implementation process for green IT, mitigate transition risks, and meet your company’s sustainability targets.
The DNA of a sustainable data center
When creating a green DC, it is essential to consider the facility’s design, energy source and usage, knowledge and measurement systems, key performance indicators (KPIs), asset lifecycle management, and water conservation.
A company can implement several measures to achieve efficiency in the design of data centers. These include efficient uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, liquid cooling, advanced battery technology, SF6-free switchgear, and efficient space utilization. Additionally, the company can cut energy usage by assigning financial value to carbon emissions, procuring renewable energy, and utilizing market-based options for clean electricity. These measures can help improve the sustainability of data center operations and reduce their environmental impact.
Integrated data center management (IDCM) systems can optimize power usage and track critical metrics. Comprehensive asset lifecycle management is crucial for reducing electronic waste and implementing circular practices.
An organization can achieve water conservation through environmentally conscious sourcing and handling of water and exploring new technologies such as liquid immersion cooling, direct evaporative cooling, direct-to-chip cooling, and underwater data centers.
Emission control in owned, outsourced, and hybrid data centers
A company can choose between owned, outsourced, or hybrid data centers for a green DC initiative. The company manages ‘owned’ data centers, while a third-party provider runs ‘outsourced’ data centers. Hybrid data centers combine aspects of both. Understanding the emission footprint and control management of these DCs is crucial to achieving sustainability objectives.
In an owned DC, the company has more control over the operations, such as facilities management, non-IT energy tracking, exploring renewable energy resources, water and e-waste management, and vendor selection. However, this requires more investment because it is a dedicated setup.
A company can measure scope 1 and 2 emissions by tracking direct emissions within its control, such as the combustion of fossil fuels for backup generators, heating systems, and the release of refrigerants used in cooling systems, as well as indirect purchased energy, such as emissions associated with the generation of electricity consumed by the data center.
On the other hand, outsourced DCs provide less control for organizations but give them the ability to contract and outline requirements as part of the procurement process. Co-location offers the leverage of specialized and shared infrastructure for energy efficiency, economies of scale, and environmental sustainability. For this, certifications such as LEED and ISO 14001 are required, which helps in ESG reporting. Organizations need to collect carbon footprint data from the outsourced DC provider to report on their organization’s scope 3 emissions.
In a hybrid DC model, an organization outsources non-critical business operations to the cloud, resulting in resource savings and a reduced energy footprint. The organization retains control over critical functions related to data security. The organization can decide what percentage of operations should be outsourced without affecting business operations. Through hybrid DCs, organizations have less control and higher reliance on public cloud service providers to report on e-waste management and disposal of hardware. Organizations must design a green DC strategy based on workloads as the most cost-efficient solution.
Three imperatives to assess your journey to going green
Switching to clean energy: Green data centers use renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. However, renewable energy's limited availability, cost, and reliability can make it challenging for data centers to transition.
Integrating legacy systems: Retrofitting data centers to meet green standards can be challenging due to infrastructure limitations, such as outdated cooling systems and limited space. Older data centers use more power for cooling, which can result in excessive electricity consumption. One way to overcome this issue is by implementing DC scaling through a cloud hyperscale approach. This model enables adding or removing servers as per demand and can be combined with virtualization to lower power usage.
From e-waste to circularity: Organizations with limited IT budgets often make incremental changes to their data center hardware, which can add complexities. However, the first step can be adopting a green procurement policy for new procurement, even though there may be a gap in active contracts execution of the policy adoption. End-of-life IT assets can be more actively assessed for recycling/reuse. Proactive data center infrastructure management can improve performance when equipment efficiency and design standards for operational efficiency are considered.
Achieving compliance with emerging standards
A compliant green DC is essential to meeting sustainability goals. There are several methods for doing so, including established and emerging standards. One such standard is the ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 90.4-2019, which sets energy standards for data centers.
Commonly used metrics for measuring sustainability include Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), which calculates the ratio of total power consumption to IT equipment usage, and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE), which measures the facility’s carbon footprint as a percentage of its total energy consumption. Customers also track IT power consumption, rack utilization, and virtualization percentage.
Newer metrics are under development to focus on green DC initiatives such as clean energy procurement, waste management, and recycling. Others include Renewable Energy Factor (REF), Electronics Disposal Efficiency, IT Equipment Energy, IT Equipment Utilization, Waste Heat Utilization, Waste Recycling Rate, and the Digital Sustainability Index. The Digital Sustainability Index evaluates multiple factors to give a complete sustainability rating.
A company can choose between owned, outsourced, or hybrid data centers for a green DC initiative. The company manages ‘owned’ data centers, while a third-party provider runs ‘outsourced’ data centers. Hybrid data centers combine aspects of both. Understanding the emission footprint and control management of these DCs is crucial to achieving sustainability objectives.
Mastering Green IT reporting
Companies have begun communicating and disclosing sustainability information for their IT operations, although they are still in the early stages. There is a growing awareness and interest in this area. CIOs actively seek to understand their current state, including establishing baselines for data center, cloud, and workplace emissions and identifying the most relevant metrics to track.
However, we have identified six typical challenges in this journey:
- Decoupling ever-increasing IT requirements from increasing energy consumption and emissions.
- Gaining a complete understanding of the ‘‘as-is’’ state of sustainable IT operations.
- Calculating scope 3 emissions attributable to IT operations.
- Understanding the impact of cloud operations on IT sustainability.
- Defining the ideal ‘‘to-be’’ state and roadmap.
- Identifying the suitable systems to monitor, measure, and report on sustainability progress.
Our sustainability roadmap
TCS aims to lower our carbon footprint by 70% by 2025 and achieve net zero emissions by 2030. To reach these targets, we are adopting a greenhouse gas (GHG) management strategy focusing on green infrastructure, green IT, operational efficiencies powered by IT, and renewable energy. We monitor energy consumption through our Remote Online Monitoring Center. Through these efforts, we have reduced our GHG emissions by around 3,200 tCO2e in FY 2022 and decreased our average data center PUE from 1.85 in FY’16 to 1.66 in FY’22.
In a data-driven world, green data centers will shape a new sustainable future by reducing energy usage and carbon footprint while saving costs and improving performance. Let’s take that step together and protect our planet to unlock a better future.
