EDITOR’S QUESTION
DATA CENTRES
STILL AREN’T
DOING ENOUGH
TO OPTIMISE
THEIR ENERGY
PERFORMANCE.
target, while the Church of
England goes further still with its
plan to get there by 2030.
DR STU REDSHAW,
FOUNDER AND CTO,
EKKOSENSE
emands to adopt a
Circular Economy
approach – one that
considers the full
lifecycle of a product or
service – are becoming
a growing part of the climate debate,
particularly with the broader adoption of
net-zero greenhouse gas emission targets
by governments, major commercial
organisations and other institutions.
D
The UK Government has already
enshrined its 2050 net-zero target in
law, while many brands have been quick
to communicate their own carbon
reduction commitments. BP aims to
become a net-zero carbon emitter by
2050, Sainsbury’s has set itself a 2040
32
Issue 13
These are all ambitious targets and
will require serious commitment if
organisations are to achieve or even get
close to their net zero commitments.
Circular Economy thinking, with its focus
on removing waste and pollution from
processes and keeping products and their
component materials in use for as long as
possible, needs to be part of a portfolio of
strategies that combine to help address
the net zero imperative.
Given the scale of the challenge, it’s clear
that data centre operations – a sector
that already burns more carbon globally
than the aviation industry – now has a
critical role to play in supporting progress
towards net zero.
Data centres are currently the
organisation’s second largest consumers
of energy, with over 35% of their energy
consumption taken up by powering
cooling equipment. However, despite this
dramatic power usage, data centres still
aren’t doing enough to optimise their
energy performance.
While it’s understandable that data centre
teams prioritise risk avoidance for their
critical services, simply adding more
and more expensive cooling hardware to
handle escalating capacity demands has
left organisations with a significant data
centre carbon legacy.
At EkkoSense we can see that – as an
industry – the data centre sector isn’t
doing enough.
When we recently surveyed some 128
UK data centre halls, we found that the
average data centre cooling utilisation
level was just 34%.
Indeed, our software-driven thermal
optimisation analysis suggests that,
without taking active steps to monitor,
manage and maximise data centre
performance, our data centres will
continue to waste more than 20% of the
energy they consume.
And, given the benefits in terms of
releasing capacity, managing risk and
reducing energy consumption that are now
available with the latest capacity planning
and thermal optimisation capabilities,
we believe it’s now incumbent on data
centre operators to seize the optimisation
opportunities that are now available.
Providing data centre teams with real-time
access to their critical heartbeat power,
cooling and space data means they can
run their estates much leaner – not only
releasing rack capacity but also delivering
average cooling energy savings of 24%.
So before embarking on a full-scale
transition to a Circular Economy model,
we believe there are plenty of quick wins
that data centre teams can deliver to
support their organisation’s broader net
zero ambitions. ◊
www.intelligentdatacentres.com