Environment

Energy Management

It’s no secret that data centers consume a lot of power. After all, we’re in the business of powering your daily lives, from surfing the internet to storing data for mission critical infrastructure to powering innovations of the future. Data centers need to provide consistent and reliable power 24/7. However, there are numerous ways in which we reduce our consumption and optimize our utilization. We do this through energy efficient standard designs, efficiency retrofit projects, daily monitoring and management to optimize Power Utilization Efficiency (PUE), and by incorporating innovative technologies into our data centers. We track and report our energy consumption, energy intensity, and PUE to our Board of Directors quarterly and to the public annually through our ESG report to hold ourselves accountable. We have also committed to a net zero emissions goal by 2030. The vast amount of our emissions come from our purchased electrical power, so reducing our energy usage is our first step to net zero.

Our standard data center designs prioritize energy efficiency. We use high efficiency air-cooled technology and implement internal closed-loop chilled-water systems which both cool the data center more efficiently than traditional means of data center cooling and recycle water to eliminate the need for additional water consumption. Our air-cooled units allow for free cooling by using cold outside air as heat rejection instead of relying on additional energy used by compressors. Our power equipment is highly efficient, and we implement power saving settings available on specific equipment. Temperature set-points are also standardized with efficiency in mind; we align our set-points with the latest ASHREA guidelines. DataBank’s data centers are also designed to incorporate hot or cold aisle containment with temperature sensors to minimize air mixing and reduce cooling needs. We utilize smart LED lighting with occupancy sensors in our standard design. Where we are operating existing facilities, we implement energy efficiency retrofit projects to reduce our consumption. These projects include LED retrofits, hot or cold aisle containment, airflow optimization, additional sensors for monitoring, and equipment upgrades. Monitoring is key, and we install state-of-the-art Building Management Systems (BMS) to actively optimize our data center performance.

We have also opportunistically employed innovative and advanced technologies to optimize energy efficiency. We installed utility-scale lithium-ion batteries that shift load to manage peak demand on the grid. Not only do these batteries allow for an extra backup source for our facilities, but they also provide stability to the regional grid and enable local utilities to deploy additional intermittent sources of power, such as wind and solar. At our ATL1 facility, we collaborated with Georgia Tech to implement several energy efficient technologies, including a fuel-cell microgrid to power the Georgia Tech supercomputer and a heat recovery system that provides waste heat from the data center to the building next door, removing the need for additional office heating. We also have installed electric vehicle (EV) chargers at several of our sites to encourage and support the electrification of transportation. To read more about our advanced technologies for energy efficiency see ATL1 Microgrid.

Renewable Power

While we will focus first on reducing our energy consumption through efficiency, optimization, and innovative technologies, for our remaining electricity needs, we turn to renewable power. We purchase bundled, load-following Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels. Further, we enroll in utility tariff programs that provide us with renewable power wherever possible. Through REC purchases, green tariff programs, and certified renewable utilities, 10+ of our data centers are 100% renewable powered. We also are evaluating the opportunity to add renewable generation to our sites. To read more about our renewable power program, see our renewable energy milestone and EPA Renewable Power Partner Tech and Telecom Top 30.

Carbon Emissions

With our net zero emissions by 2030 initiative, we will mitigate carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. The majority of our emissions come from Scope 2, or purchased electricity, so energy efficiency and renewable power are key to removing those emissions. Reductions for our Scope 1 emissions, diesel fuel for emergency backup power, natural gas, and fugitive refrigerant emissions, will be focused around implementing new low-emissions and emissions-free technologies. Scope 3 emissions, while not in our current net zero by 2030 goal, also will be addressed through sustainable building practices and other programs.

Sustainable Building Practices

We also address sustainability considerations through our building practices. New construction always begins with the environment and community in mind as we collaborate with local, state, and federal agencies to comply with all permitting requirements. Land use, biodiversity, and natural resource concerns are resolved in the initial siting process. Our facilities are located close to major markets or cities, so much of our construction takes place in urban and previously developed environments. Where we do expand on less developed land, care is taken to minimize and mitigate impacts on local ecology. As an example, we took the mitigation efforts required for our IAD3 facility to the next level by donating money to the Arbor Foundation and participating in a local tree planting event during which our employees volunteered to help plant 200 trees. To read more, see our press release on the Arbor Day initiative.

Data centers built with cement and steel contain high amounts of “embodied-carbon” or carbon emissions created during the manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, and disposal processes of those materials. To address reducing the use of materials with high embodied-carbon, DataBank was a co-founding member of the Infrastructure Masons Climate Accord, along with other major digital infrastructure companies. This group aims to identify other materials or manufacturing processes of materials and best practices for sustainable construction in the digital infrastructure industry. To learn more, read our press release Founding member of iMason’s Climate Accord.

Climate Risk and Resiliency

We take the accelerating risks of climate change seriously and account for the likelihood of natural disasters such as drought, flooding, high winds (including tornados and hurricanes), earthquakes, and fires when building resiliency into our designs. We build facilities only outside of 500-year flood plains; facilities in areas prone to earthquakes are reinforced, and facilities in areas with increased risk of hurricanes and tornadoes have roofs able to withstand 120+ MPH winds. All facilities are built with redundancy to maintain power and cooling even in the event of a power outage. Several of our data centers include advanced storage and microgrid technologies that provide additional resiliency to our designs. As a testament to our resilient designs and planning, our Texas-based facilities experienced no outages during the 2021 winter storm. Read more in our storm readiness blog.

Risks are assessed for new construction to consider the changing conditions, regulations, and financial concerns related to climate change. To learn more about our Climate-related practices, please see our Climate Change Policy

Water and Waste Management

There has been a recent shift in focus to the water demands of data centers. Our standard design uses closed-loop chilled water systems in which the water is recycled through the loop requiring almost no additional water to be consumed. We manage office waste at the facility level and implement recycling and compost programs where available. E-waste and other hazardous waste disposal are handled responsibly through 3rd party vendors. We participate in e-waste recycling programs for our enterprise computing and server equipment through our R2 or e-steward certified vendors.