As the world gets talking about climate change with the COP26 summit ongoing in the UK, B2B services business Ark Data Centres has been leading the way on driving sustainability within its industry.
One of the ways in which the business has sought to raise industry standards on tackling climate change is by signing up to the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact [CNDCP], a group of data centre operators and trade associations committed to the European Green Deal.
The coalition of industry operators has pledged to do everything in its power to help achieve the ambitious greenhouse gas cuts outlined in the climate law and to leverage technology and digitalisation to help make a Net Zero Europe a reality by 2050.
Ark Data Centres CEO, Huw Owen, said: “To ensure that data centres are an integral part of the sustainable future of Europe, data centre operators and trade associations have agreed to make data centres climate neutral by 2030.”
Beyond its membership of the CNDCP, Ark has taken a number of other steps to make a statement on climate change action and significantly reduce its environmental footprint, as Owen explained.
“We have explored various areas where our business may be having an adverse impact on the environment,” he said.
“As part of this move, we have identified water consumption as one example of where data centres using evaporative cooling could have a detrimental effect on the local water supply. To remedy this, our team at Ark has deployed innovative thinking and developed a ‘Water Buffering and Saving Mode’ for our cooling equipment which reduced our original peak water usage by a staggering 85 per cent.
“Furthermore, by capturing water from the roof and from the ‘run-off’ of the car parks, it is possible for our data centre evaporative cooling systems to operate solely on harvested rainwater, except for the first year where we needed to do an initial fill of the storage tanks. But now, our facilities have no adverse influence on the local utility water supply.”
Ark Data Centres has also sought to maintain some of the lowest power usage effectiveness [PUE] in its sector by developing innovative direct air evaporative cooling capability that dramatically lowers energy consumption and cost.
“Our systems are capable of providing compressor free cooling for 100 per cent of every year,” Owen outlined.
“By using sophisticated technology, we can ensure that the data centre cooling adapts to IT load in real time to reduce wasted energy and to deliver just the right amount of cooling to each rack across its operating spectrum, up to 50 kilowatts per rack.”
To consolidate this good work, Ark has also aimed to eliminate the use of diesel in its systems, begun implementing the use of steel over concrete on its sites, and actively promoted the use of electric powered, greener vehicles in the development of its parking facilities.
Owen revealed: “Over the next two years, we are going to be replacing the diesel in the fuel tanks of our standby generators with Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil. This will reduce our existing and very limited Scope 1 fossil fuel emissions by 90 per cent, our NOx emissions by at least 15 per cent and our particulate emissions by at least 25 per cent. Growing fuel crops is not as sustainable as eliminating carbon-based fuel completely, so every new market-defining London facility under development by Ark will use generators that can run on 100 per cent hydrogen, providing a defined route to net zero carbon emissions for the business.
“Furthermore, we identified that the abundant use of concrete accounts for roughly eight per cent of global carbon emissions, which is over three times that of the entire aviation industry. Our factory focused modular building process not only reduces construction time on site, but also favours steel over concrete to enable us to recycle up to 90 per cent of our building fabric in the future, thereby lessening the overall environmental impact of our premises compared to traditional builds.
“Overall, we seek to reduce the unnecessary use of raw materials and encourage re-use of materials and products. Switching to steel helps with this, but we have also looked to become a ‘zero waste to landfill’ business and diverted waste to recycling, composing or energy recovery across the board. A recent review of our waste management system identified that 96 per cent of our company waste was recycled, with four per cent going for energy recovery. These waste management practices lead to a lower environmental impact and positive carbon reduction.
“We also encourage the use of electric vehicles with dedicated sections of our car parks equipped with EV chargers and have earmarked provision for up to 20 per cent of car parking spaces in the future.”
Over the previous six years, Ark Data Centres has also been entirely powered by renewable energy sources and is fully engaged in the practice of purchasing renewable energy up to three years in advance. This, according to Owen, sends out strong signals to the market that there is demand for renewables to be integrated into the national grid.
Owen said: “Our practices send out strong market signals for the installation of additional grid connected renewable generation capacity. In turn, our customers benefit from the lowest renewable energy prices available in the UK market, while dramatically lowering their own carbon footprint.”
Elsewhere, some of Ark’s most exciting eco-friendly innovations have focused on biodiversity, with the introduction living walls into its urban data centres.
Owen explained: “Biodiversity is an area that is not often synonymous with data centres. However, in a campus setting, biodiversity can play a significant part in both the wellbeing of the people working on the campus and contribute to our customers sustainability goals.
“With that in mind, the current Ark Data Centre campuses between them have in excess of five hectares which are dedicated conservation areas, including bat corridors and a bat cave, badger sets and hibernacula all designed to encourage the local wildlife to thrive.
“To add to this, our living walls on urban data centres contain ‘planters’ at each floor level which act as significant flower beds with ample soil and water retention that can be easily maintained, producing a real living garden. As well as encouraging biodiversity, the vegetation produces its own ‘microclimate’ absorbing heat when the weather is hot preventing it from getting into the building and acting as a natural insulator when it is cold, making us even more energy efficient.”
Photo by Francesco Gallarotti on Unsplash
