White Paper

In recent years, the data center industry has made excellent progress in enhancing energy efficiency and adopting renewable power sources.
There are also many innovative new solutions in development. However,
there are still major challenges in this area that we have yet to overcome:

• The improvements are in new builds. Legacy data centers are hard to upgrade
• PUE while useful has intrinsic flaws as used by the industry
• Not all renewables are equal

There is also another equally important dimension to sustainability; full cradle
to grave environmental impact. Data center operators should expand their
sustainability programs to encompass this by:

•  Offering proactive advice on power consumption at the data floor level
• Helping to tackle embodied impact rather than just operational impact
• Pushing for more transparent universal standards which make it easier for customers to make informed choices.