05/07/2010

New green building standard could reduce energy use in Data Centres by more than 50%

A working group of influential organisations has guided the development of a far reaching revision to the BREEAM method for assessing the environmental performance of Data Centres. BREEAM Data Centres 2010 has been tailored to assess the particular environmental impacts of these distinctive buildings, whilst retaining BREEAM's holistic approach to assessing the sustainability of buildings. It encourages the latest design and operational thinking in this rapidly changing sector.

Carol Atkinson, CEO for BRE Global, said "Due to the nature of their activity, Data Centres are of course inherently high users of energy - often more than 10 times as energy intensive as a typical office, with many less building occupants. We estimate that by designing and building a Data Centre to BREEAM ‘Excellent' standard, energy use can be cut by more than half compared to a conventional new build facility.  This would create a Data Centre that operates at the highest level of industry efficiency."

The new scheme has been developed using the existing BREEAM methodology as a framework but adapted significantly with the help of leading organisations including Digital Realty Trust, HSBC, Hewlett Packard and EDF Energy, whose ‘real world' experiences of the particular characteristics of these buildings has been invaluable.

Digital Realty Trust's Chief Technical Officer Jim Smith said, "The BREEAM certification process has tremendous value for the Data Centre industry. We are committed to building all future projects to BREEAM standard in Europe and were the first to achieve BREEAM ‘Excellent' rating for a data centre in Europe. This is a long line of industry firsts that Digital Realty Trust has achieved for energy efficiency and environmental responsibility. We are very proud to be supporting BRE Global as it leads the way."

Further information on BREEAM Data Centres 2010 can be found at www.breeam.org/datacentres

 

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ENDS

Press enquiries : SIMON GUY, +44(0)1923 664305, guys@bre.co.uk.

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Notes for Editors

1          BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) is the leading and most widely used environmental assessment method for buildings around the world, with almost 200,000 buildings certified and over a million buildings in total registered under the scheme. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable design and has become the de-facto measure used to describe a building's environmental performance. Credits are awarded in nine categories according to performance. These credits are then added together to produce a single overall score on a scale of Pass, Good, Very Good, Excellent and Outstanding which is also reflected in a star rating from 1 to 5 stars http://www.breeam.org/.

2          BRE Global Limited (incorporating LPCB & BREEAM) is an independent third party approvals body offering certification of fire, security and sustainability products and services to an international market. BRE Global mission is to ‘Protect People, Property and the Planet' and is a trading subsidiary of the BRE Trust, the registered research and education charity which owns the BRE Group. For further information please contact: BRE Global, Garston, Watford, UK, WD25 9XX, Tel: +44 (0)1923 664100, Fax: +44 (0)1923 664910, Email: enquiries@breglobal.com or visit http://www.breglobal.com/

3          Digital Realty Trust, Inc. is the world's largest wholesale data centre provider. The company is focused on providing Turn-Key Datacenter(R) and Powered Base Building(R) datacenter solutions for domestic and international tenants across a variety of industry verticals ranging from information technology and Internet enterprises, to manufacturing and financial services. Digital Realty Trust's 85 properties, excluding one property held as an investment in an unconsolidated joint venture, contain applications and operations critical to the day-to-day operations of technology industry tenants and corporate enterprise datacenter tenants. Comprising approximately 15.1 million rentable square feet as of May 10, 2010, including 1.9 million square feet of space held for redevelopment, Digital Realty Trust's portfolio is located in 27 markets throughout North America and Europe. www.digitalrealtytrust.co.uk

4          There are two closely related metrics most commonly used to help gauge the energy efficiency of Data Centres. These are the Data Centre Infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE) and the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). BREEAM Data Centres 2010 includes credits for improving the energy efficiency of a Data Centre using these metrics alongside improved performance over Building Regulations requirements. The scheme encourages the procurement of sustainable IT equipment and BRE Global calculates that designing to an Excellent rating under BREEAM would produce a PUE of 1.55 or higher, producing a Data Centre that could be between 2 and 4 times more efficient depending on the nature and scale of the facility. This could ultimately result in an energy saving of 475 to 712.5 kWh/m²/year when compared to a conventional Data Centre equating to a carbon saving of between 247 to 370.5 kgCO₂/m²/year.

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