Why data centre sustainability matters more than ever – and what to do about it

Amy Marks was chatting with strangers at a function when the topic of data centres came up.

Not knowing Amy’s profession, the small talk soon turned sour when the group began slating the new hyperscale facilities being developed on the outskirts of their city.

Amy, a Senior Vice President at Compass Datacenters, listened for a while before smiling: "Is this a good time to mention I work in the industry?"

The conversation that followed confirmed something Amy had been noticing everywhere: the industry's biggest challenge might not be sustainability, but rather the information vacuum around it.

“I explained that we have a closed loop system that we only need to fill once – and that we use liquid and air hybrid cooling. We’re not doing chillers or wasting lots of water. And they were stunned, because that wasn’t their perception of how data centres operate,” Amy said.

The group also had misconceptions about why data centres were being built and that not all data centres are AI factories.

“They didn’t know that we need them for our defence, healthcare and education systems. And I feel like, right now, we're at a pivotal point where people need this understanding,” Amy added.

High awareness

Despite the misconceptions, Amy said the strangers were otherwise educated about data centres. Many knew of technical terms and about facilities being developed both locally and further afield.

The combination of high, yet sometimes distorted, industry awareness, is something developers should consider when engaging communities, Amy said.

“You need to have transparent conversations and show communitiesactual metrics for your sustainability efforts.”

“It’s hugely important, because people are very clued up about what's going on. And if you think they don't know what certain phrases or activities are – they do.”

Walking the walk

Amy’s encounter may have been awkward, but it’s a conversation she feels prepared to handle. She says Compass’ sustainability efforts run deep and extend well beyond box ticking.

“We don't have a sustainability programme that drives our business. We have a business that does the right thing - and that business doing the right thing leads to much more sustainable outcomes than the reverse,” she said.

For Amy, doing the right thing means “living and breathing integrity”, right down to the finer details.

“To give an analogy, there are guys in the construction industry that don't paint behind the light switch – they just paint around it. And the same is true for data centre developers when it comes to sustainability.

“There are some who are really invested in communities and others that barely move beyond noise compliance.

“In our view, if a developer only has check boxes, then they’re probably not doing enough,” she said.

Painting behind the switch

In a bid to “paint behind the light switch”, Amy recently turned her attention to sustainability certification. She noticed inefficiencies in the building inspection process and devised an innovative workaround.

“When I started at Compass, we were getting certifications for each building on our campus, because that’s what was required at the time. I thought to myself, wow, this is repetitive, because we had ten identical copies of each building on site. So, the inspector was coming out repeatedly for buildings they had already seen - and we were creating all this digital waste.”

To combat this, Amy and team met with the Green Building Institute and suggested they create a new “hyperscale campus certification”.

“The idea was that they would give us the documentation just once, along with an attestation that either nothing has changed - or only certain things have changed - between each campus building.

“That way they could reduce carbon footprint by not having somebody drive out to see the same building. And they agreed it was a good idea.”

In doing so, Amy and team made it easier for developers across the USA to gain “Green Globes”, akin to Australia’s carbon credit scheme.

“The Green Globes certification and other initiatives at Compass enable some tax abatements and green financing, but also create discipline around how we design, construct and operate buildings.”

Design optimisation

Compass has also put the microscope on its design features, making sure sustainability is infused in every step of the build process. It uses a component-based system to design its facilities and works with partners through long-term enterprise relationships – a set up which Amy says make sustainability easier.

“Because our facilities are decoupled and fungible, we are able to have a standard and react to change much quicker than in a monolithically designed building with variable contractors. We can truly pick and act like partners with our contractors - and not just go for a low bid.”

Compass also has a framework around industrialised construction, covering components, kits of parts, market ecosystems and subsystems of partner networks. Amy says this “sixth layer” enables “systems thinking” around sustainability.

“What's unique about it is, most people do prefabrication and they're trying to optimise a component, and they don't think about the fact that it's integrated with other components into a system. Nor do they think about the fact that there are different people optimising those particular components at one time.

“So rarely do people get involved in the entirety of the system and think about trade-offs between optimising different components and the system optimisation.”

Further insight

Sharing more on how Compass’ sustainability efforts, Amy Marks will deliver a keynote at the upcoming Data Centre World Australia Conference.

This year’s event will be held 7-9 September at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre.

Learn more and register your tickets here.