Sustainability goals Clear Data centers are accelerating to green

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Since 2016, the scale of China’s computing power has maintained a rapid growth of about 40%, which has promoted the rapid development of the digital economy, especially under the traction of innovative technologies and applications such as artificial intelligence, the importance of computing power has become increasingly prominent. In October 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the Action Plan for High-quality Development of Computing Infrastructure, focusing on promoting the green and low-carbon development of computing infrastructure, and proposed a series of specific measures.

As the core carrier of computing power, the sustainability of the data center has been mentioned in a more important position. Wang Yuntao pointed out, “From the demand, policy to the technical level, the current industry environment has laid a good foundation for the sustainable development of data centers, but also pointed out a clear direction.”

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Although the goal is clear, the practice around this goal is still relatively lagging. As a global leader in data centers, infrastructure and digital services for key applications, Schneider Electric believes that the data center industry is currently facing two major challenges: a lack of quantitative metrics to measure the sustainability of different data centers to help end users and investors make decisions; Second, there is a lack of cross-departmental development consensus. In order to better promote sustainable development, enterprises need to establish cross-departmental consensus, set group goals and take effective measures.

Lin Mi pointed out that the quantification of indicators is the first step to drive the sustainable development of data centers. Aiming to provide a benchmark to better support data center operators and empower the industry to achieve its own sustainability goals, Schneider Electric has presented the first indicator framework for measuring environmental sustainability in data centers.

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Schneider Electric proposed five metrics based on energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, water use, waste generation and impact on local ecosystems, as well as 28 detailed key indicators to measure the environmental impact of data centers. In addition, different indicators are used to quantitatively assess the environmental impact of data centers at different stages of sustainable development.

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As one of the world’s largest providers of data center, colocation and connectivity solutions, Digital Realty has more than 310 data centers in more than 50 locations on 6 continents, and its two data centers in Hong Kong have become one of the best choices to help Chinese enterprises go global. Digital Realty’s connectivity solution, ServiceFabric™, connects more than 130 owned data centers, more than 370 third-party data centers, and multiple public clouds. In addition, more than 70 members have now joined the directory, listing more than 100 services, including secure direct connectivity to more than 200 global cloud portals. ServiceFabric™ is redefining the way customers and partners interact with Digital Realty’s global data center platform by enabling an open, collaborative environment that enables businesses to efficiently build and easily coordinate their ideal solutions.

For a long time, Digital Realty has been adhering to the concept of sustainable development and focusing on creating green and energy-efficient data centers. Li Xinyu said that Liruitong has 1GW of renewable energy capacity, its 126 data centers match 100% renewable electricity, and it has more than 1.1 million square meters of green building certification. In addition, Digital Realty has set a global carbon reduction target of 68% by 2030 and, as the largest buyer of renewable energy among data center providers, issued the industry’s first green bond dedicated to green projects.

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Around the data center sustainable development goals, Capital Online, which has more than ten years of data center operation experience, has also conducted a multi-faceted exploration. As the earliest integrated cloud computing service provider of global cloud network in China, Capital Online has realized the synergy of company development and energy conservation, and actively practiced the concept of energy conservation and environmental protection. In order to better adapt to the rapid growth of computing power and its own development needs, Capital Online combined with the strategy of “East number and west calculation” to optimize the layout of data centers across the country. At the same time, the capital attaches great importance to low-carbon energy saving, Lee Kuan Yew pointed out that this is not only a response to the national strategy of the initiative, but also an important assessment standard of internal efficiency, to a large extent optimize the input-output ratio of enterprises.