The Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact (CNDCP) has cautioned against rushed implementation of minimum performance standards for Europe’s data centres.
The rapid growth of data centres with the associated increase in energy consumption is well known and many jurisdictions have taken steps towards recording their performance.
Based primarily on indicators developed to measure the power and water consumption and renewable energy use of data centres, the concept of ‘minimum performance standards’ has emerged, through which facilities that do not meet them can be removed from the market.
Clearly key to this is the availability of comprehensive data – and this is where proposals for minimum performance standards in Europe, mandated in the recast Energy Efficiency Directive, start to fall down, according to the Pact, which has raised multiple concerns in a new paper.
Advocating a “phased, evidence-based policy approach”, the Pact describe the data on which the proposals are based as “incomplete, inconsistent and in places simply wrong” and calls for time to be taken to collect, collate and analyse more and better data from across the EU.
This is the result of the hasty implementation of the Directive and that few member states have met the deadline for data centre reporting requirements.
Other issues highlighted include that the design of the minimum performance standards is focussed on the largest data centre operators, who are already doing the most and achieving the highest sustainability standards, and that they take no account of regional variations in climate and water scarcity across the EU.
In this case a sliding scale of power and water usage metrics, as has already been defined by the Pact, is advocated.
The Pact in its paper warns that at a time when European and national governments are working to attract next generation AI and cloud-based technologies and achieve strategic autonomy and digital sovereignty, poorly formulated minimum performance standards may actively discourage investment.
Worse, incomplete understanding of the complex interrelation of numerous sustainability factors could unintentionally exclude some of the most environmentally efficient data centres and reduce customer choice.
Matt Pullen, chair of the CNDCP Board, said the Pact is in favour of well-designed and effective minimum performance standards as a way of achieving the Commission’s policy objective of excluding the worst performing data centres from the market.
“However, the current proposals are confused. A lot more work is needed to ensure the proposed minimum performance standards deliver their intended outcome without inflicting significant harm on Europe’s digital ambitions.”
The three metrics widely used for data centres are the power and water usage effectivenesses, i.e. normalised values of the overall power and water consumptions, and the renewable energy factor.
The proposal from the EU is that the renewable energy factor should reach 100% for all data centres by 2030 but also should encourage hourly matching of renewables. However, the Pact feels that as this is largely dependent on in-country grid characteristics it should be a voluntary metric and that guarantees of origin, PPAs and on-site generation should be accepted equally.
A fourth metric, the energy reuse factor measuring the use of waste heat, is similarly considered not appropriate for a minimum performance standard.
Data centres are here to stay and to evolve both physically and technologically and it is crucial that new standards remain fit for purpose.
A possible approach would be to have both minimum performance standards and more aspirational requirements in the form of pre-qualification criteria – but whatever outcome is ultimately adopted it makes sense for these to be soundly based from the outset, even if it does take additional time to achieve.
The Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact is a voluntary initiative currently representing 85% of Europe’s data centre market seeking to support the objectives of the Green Deal and achieving operational climate neutrality by 2030.
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