To empower corporations to accurately evaluate, compare, and showcase their digital infrastructure’s sustainability credentials to all stakeholders, regardless of whether their applications are housed in business-managed data centers, colocation facilities, or maintained by other third-party entities such as hyperscalers or managed service providers (MSPs), the Uptime Institute has presented its Uptime Institute Sustainability Assessment.
Companies that undertake the Uptime Institute Sustainability Assessment will be able to track and demonstrate growth over time, both within and outside of the organization. They will also have a comprehensive view of their sustainability status and accomplishments thus far, spanning a myriad of autonomous and interconnected corporate functions and standards.
By facilitating public recognition for businesses that comply with internationally accepted best practices for sustainable digital infrastructure, the Assessment’s results can guide continuous enhancements in sync with sustainability commitments.
The Uptime Institute Sustainability Assessment scrutinizes and assesses actions taken and progress made in 14 major fields and over 50 subcategories that encompass every aspect of data center sustainability. This assessment can be applied to a fully distributed hybrid IT estate or a single specific site.
Significant disciplines include Information Technology Operations and Management, Facility Operations & Management, in addition to intersecting realms such as clean energy, IT and facilities equipment procurement, as well as company-level greenhouse gas reporting. These encompass matters related to IT equipment, energy and water consumption, carbon emissions, and waste, which involves the reuse and recycling of obsolete material.
An equilibrium between the global demand for more efficient and sustainable digital infrastructure and retaining the non-negotiable attributes of availability and resilience is what the scope of evaluation aims to achieve.
Ali Moinuddin, the Chief Corporate Development Officer at Uptime Institute remarked, “With this evaluation, our hope is to aid the communities of data center owner-operators and service providers in manufacturing, applying, evaluating, and managing actionable and practical sustainability initiatives that yield significant results, akin to our unique and revolutionary production of the Uptime Sustainability Executive Advisory report in 2021 and the presentation of the first-ever Accredited Sustainability Advisor education course in 2022. Organizations can employ the Sustainability Assessment to discern which sustainability endeavours, without jeopardizing the availability and resilience of their crucial digital infrastructure, can assist in reducing the environmental harm and operation costs of their specific data center operation modality and deployment architecture.”
Uptime Institute alleges that every business involved in the operation or outsourcing of digital infrastructure is currently in a critical phase with the introduction of the Uptime Institute Sustainability Assessment. The heightened analysis of individual and collective environmental footprints and sustainability strategies employed by data centres by regulators, legislators, consumers, and investors is leading to demands for a higher level of transparency, as claimed by Uptime Institute. This surge in the visibility of the data center sector might be attributed partly to the significant increase in total energy consumption and carbon emissions within this sector. Uptime Institute further added that there is a mounting anticipation for organizations to have an exhaustive understanding of the environmental effects of their digital infrastructure, well-laid out plans addressing every dimension of data center sustainability, and clearly delineated initiatives for constant enhancement.
According to research conducted by Uptime Intelligence, many operators in the IT and data center field are at the early stages of dealing with rapid changes and increasing complexity. In the latest report by Uptime Intelligence, titled ‘Sustainability strategies face greater pressure in 2024’, only a small fraction of digital infrastructure operators monitor and report all three scopes of carbon emissions. Furthermore, less than half of these operators monitor and report water use, and a mere quarter keep track of IT waste and recycling.
The Uptime Institute has scrutinised over 150 international standards, regulations, and rules, both current and planned, to ensure the Uptime Institute Sustainability Assessment is exhaustive and forward-thinking. A diverse international team at Uptime worked with an expertly-skilled representative group from over twenty-two esteemed businesses and service providers. These collaborators have built and managed hundreds of data centers, representing more than three gigawatts of installed capacity across 38 countries.
The Uptime Institute Sustainability Assessment is globally applicable, as it takes into account climatic variances, availability of low-carbon energy and green resources, and local/regional specifications. These considerations inform the best practice standards for digital infrastructure sustainability. The assessment results have been designed for maximum alignment with recognised global standards as well as current and future regulatory reporting mandates.
