This audio was created using Microsoft Azure Speech Services
We happen to be living in a time marked by an imminent need to reduce carbon emissions and conserve water and other natural resources. But before you can “reduce” carbon, it’s important to understand different applications within an enterprise in order to target and prioritize efforts. For example, you may be wondering if you should modernize all of the HVAC systems in your buildings, transform the vehicle fleet to EVs, or look at modernizing the data centers.
The one application that’s somewhat elusive and often a mystery is the data center. While parts of your data center may have energy use ratings like ENERGY STAR in the United States or ENERG in the E.U., these organizations focus more on household products. The data center is an ecosystem made up of IT, power, and cooling systems, and it is more complicated than understanding a single product.
To enhance understanding of the carbon emissions of a data center, Schneider Electric’s Energy Management Research Center has developed the Data Center Lifecycle CO2e Calculator, a powerful, online TradeOff Tool that is easy to operate and understand.
For those of you searching for answers to your data center emissions questions, I am thrilled to report that our new calculator brings almost instant enlightenment.
We’ve made it easy for you
This tool is designed to be user friendly. You can select various points to closely match your data center attributes including data center capacity up to 5 MW, percentage of IT load, carbon intensity or servers, number of years up to 30 years, and rack power density as well as many configurations of your back-up power and cooling systems. The Data Center Lifecycle CO2e Calculator also includes the carbon footprint of the building and lets you vary the time on backup generator.
The output of the tool quickly provides the high-level data empirically as well as in graphical form for total carbon emissions, carbon emissions by year, carbon emissions broken out by Scope 1, 2, and 3, plus carbon emissions broken out by individual year, scope, and system (IT, power, cooling, building). In addition, Scope 3 emissions are further broken out by 7 individual categories. That’s a lot of information at your fingertips!
Gain a fundamental understanding of data center carbon emissions
While the tool uses best available data for the estimates, your mileage will vary, as they say. Users should take advantage of this tool for guidance while they are setting up their own systems and tools for measurement and reporting.
Our latest TradeOff Tool gives data center operators a place to go so they can get a fundamental understanding of emissions from a data center. It also provides comprehensive and granular data to inform the data center operator of the best places to look that will have the greatest effects on reduction efforts.
If you are data center operator, I wish you luck in your sustainability journey and I encourage you to leverage this tool for maximum benefit.
Add a comment