Serverfarm’s modern, award-winning global portfolio of data centers provides enterprises with critical IT infrastructure and capacity, along with a robust DMaaS solution. Our facilities were designed to meet our customers’ rapidly evolving requirements and are highly secure, reliable environments.
InCommand enables enterprise executives and data center teams to manage assets, capacities, and alerts virtually anywhere in the world.
Serverfarm sustainable data centers begin with location choices and power purchasing agreements for minimum carbon cost. Through acquisition, upgrades, and modernization of existing data centers, we provide digital infrastructure at the lowest possible embodied carbon cost. What is embodied carbon?
Serverfarm builds new data centers in response to market demand using modern designs with sustainable construction methods and materials.
Our sustainable power strategy spans renewable clean energy Power Purchasing Agreements, local microgrids, clean fuels, and low carbon energy storage. We also work to align with customer net zero targets and sustainability objectives. Serverfarm adheres to its own and customer statutory ESG compliance reporting requirements across US SEC climate reporting disclosure rules, state laws, and European EED and CSRD regulations. The company has signed the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact.
At the heart of our sustainability capabilities sits our cloud based InCommand Data Center Management as Service platform. InCommand provides complete monitoring and management oversight of every Serverfarm physical location, equipment asset and customer environment. Using a combination of InCommand, a Global Network Operations Center and expertise on the ground, Serverfarm data centers constantly report on PUE, WUE, power usage and power sources.
InCommand generated actionable data drives reporting on carbon emissions for Scope 1, 2 and 3 compliance.
We use Science Based Targets to measure the GHG profile of our operations. Once operational our data centers run with zero water consumption.
Serverfarm is expanding the use of HVO as a diesel alternative for back up generators. We are evaluating the use of fuel cells for clean energy. We have deployed MWs of Nickel Zinc battery energy storage and are securing additional capacity to roll out on a global scale.
Serverfarm maximizes the use of space by minimizing the supporting equipment footprint.
“At its core, Serverfarm is driven by strategies that find ways to put sustainable data center infrastructure on the market with minimum environmental impact.”
Securing Power for the Sustainable Future
Alongside clean energy purchasing Serverfarm is pursuing a strategy of local on-site natural gas power generation as a bridge solution, a backup generation solution and long term microgrid source of power.
Such power generation lends itself to microgrid based demand response – coupling and decoupling to the grid through a hybrid power source which switches between supplying primary base load, back up power, and grid support.
Serverfarm sees natural gas and hydrogen blend power generation as a long-term power play in markets where development may be hampered by grid constraints.
In demand response or procurement Serverfarm’s goal is to act as a good grid citizen and steward of the users outside the data center by providing the cleanest possible power for the location to local grids to support communities at times of greatest demand.
To learn more about data center sustainability, lend us your ears for The Future of Data Centers sustainability-focused podcast series
Embodied carbon is the CO2 emission associated with the manufacture, transport, construction, maintenance and end of life/disposal of a product or service.
To determine the embodied carbon cost of data centers, HKS, an international design firm, examined the operations of Serverfarm’s Chicago data center using a Whole Building Life-Cycle Analysis.
Buildings and construction directly represent around 39% of all annual global greenhouse gas emissions.
“These emissions can be divided into two categories, building operations and building materials & construction. Each represents the operational carbon and the embodied carbon of buildings respectively,” says HKS.
HKS analyzed Serverfarm’s Chicago facility, a six-story building of just under 150,000 square feet with a capacity for housing more than 4,000 server cabinets. With a rack consumption of 61,320 kWh, the building consumes 25MW of power annually.
Were such a building to be constructed today using standard materials, the carbon cost, carbon dioxide equivalent or CO2e, would be 9,425,673kgs (use of low carbon materials would see a carbon cost of 8,301,691kg but add significantly to the financial cost).
The carbon costs were itemized by material including concrete, steel, glass, wood, plastics, composites, thermal and moisture protection, openings and glazing, and finishes. The factors analyzed by HKS covered potential for global warming, acidification, eutrophication, smog formation and cost of production in non-renewable energy.
The purpose of this Whole Building Life-Cycle Analysis is to (1) create a baseline for a standard newly constructed data center, (2) compare it with a low carbon concrete option and with a building reuse option, and (3) draw conclusions applicable to the industry at large that can further reduce CO2 emissions. This report looks at Serverfarm’s CH1 Chicago data center for comparisons.
Serverfarm is a unique data center company whose mission is to maximize data center and IT infrastructure efficiencies for service providers including communication, application, cloud and internal enterprise IT organizations
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