Carbon Neutral Data Center Solutions: OpenUK, United Nations Seek Open Source Contributions

An open source organization and the United Nations are seeking contributors to develop carbon neutral solutions for data centers.

The effort involves OpenUK, a not-for-profit organization representing the UK’s Open Technology sector across hardware, software and data. Also onboard is the United Nations’ Office of Information and Communications Technology (UN-OICT). Together, the organizations have launched a competition that seeks contributions to a Data Centre Blueprint known as “Patchwork Kilt."

Demand for green data centers -- particularly in Europe -- is surging. Among the proof points: Annual revenue in the European green data center market is expected to reach $12.25 billion in 2028 -- up from $7.94 billion in 2022. That's a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5%, according to Research and Markets. Meanwhile, the U.S. data center market appears to be struggling with green IT transitions, according to Hitachi Vantara research.

Potential Open Source Solutions for Carbon-Neutral Data Centers

With an eye toward those market needs, the OpenUK-UN competition is seeking carbon neutral data center solutions that address:

• Heat redirection: Develop an open source software solution to monitor and redirect heat produced in data centres.
• Building repurposing: Participants will create an open source tool to better re-evaluate urban spaces, finding brownfield sites that can be re-used for data centres.
• Heat reuse: A statistical analysis of open datasets to identify areas to repurpose waste - heat 
• Circular supply chain: Build an open source software solution that manages the lifecycle of critical data centre components 
• Blueprint evolution: Analyze the data from Patchwork Kilt for insights into how to supercharge global sustainability efforts. 
• Community empowerment: Providing communities with actionable insights from data centres that can be used to build more sustainable cities 

The winning Challenge contributor will be invited to celebrate their success with the presentation of a trophy at OpenUK’s Awards Ceremony and dinner at the House of Lords in November 2023, the organizations said.

OpenUK And United Nations Statements: Open Source Data Center Challenge

In a prepared statement about the effort, Chris Lloyd-Jones, OpenUK’s chief blueprint officer said: “Achieving a sustainable future that benefits everyone is dependent on collaborative action – and this is why we started the Blueprint Challenge. Our collaboration creates a Challenge as a way to open up this initiative to wider contributions and a broader community, allowing new technologies to be included. It’s a critical initiative that can have a tangible impact on the future of data centres."

Lloyd-Jones, by the way, also is head of open innovation at Avanade, the major IT consulting firm backed by Microsoft and Accenture. He's also co-chair at the Green Software Foundation.

Added Salem Avan, director – policy, strategy and governance division at the UN: “Advances in computing power and Artificial Intelligence are generating major technological advances that have the potential to support progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In this context, Open source is key as it is a universal connector, uniting diverse voices through a common language. 

“I'm therefore excited to announce the October Open Source Challenge for Data Centre blueprint as a collaborative effort between OpenUK and the UN-OICT. The significance of open source in data centres cannot be overstated; it fuels innovation, transparency, and cost-efficiency. By harnessing open source technology to efficiently run data centres, we not only reduce our environmental footprint but also contribute to global sustainable development efforts.” 

Concluded Amanda Brock, CEO of OpenUK: “Our UN collaboration has been a great support over the last two years. Yet as with any COP initiative, we must deliver on our promises, working towards long-term impacts through Open Technology and its community. To maximize its longevity, our Blueprint will keep updating in line with technological progress. We are in discussions with prospective partners to usher in its next phase, so all contributions have the potential to have a real, continuous impact on building a carbon-negative data center model.”

Green IT and Sustainable Data Centers: Milestones and Trends

Meanwhile, dozens of hardware, software, cloud and sustainability companies are striving to reduce data center carbon footprints. Example efforts and milestones include:

• Innovation Hub: Danfoss, Google, Microsoft and Schneider Electric launched the Net Zero Innovation Hub For Data Centers. The hub, based in Fredericia, Denmark, will "bring together the data center sector across Europe to find concrete solutions to accelerate the green transition," the founders said.
• Data Center Carbon Emissions Software Tools: Emerging options include the Dynatrace Carbon Impact App, IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator dashboard; Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator tool; Schneider Electric' Data Center Carbon Footprint Calculator; and VMware Carbon Emissions Explorer Dashboard.
• Partnership: Start Campus will leverage sustainable water cooling from Nautilus Data Technologies and IT monitoring services from Kyndryl for a massive, sustainable hyperscale data center project in Europe.

Sustainable Data Centers: Funding and Build-Outs

Multiple companies are investing in sustainable data centers. Among the milestones to note:

• July 2023: GreenSquareDC, a data center technology startup focused on Green IT and sustainability, joined NVIDIA Inception, an accelerator program designed to nurture startups.
• July 2023: Global IT consulting firm HCLTech and Schneider Electric are partnering to develop energy- and carbon-efficient solutions for data center customers in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region.
• July 2023: Digital Realty will leverage IBM Envizi ESG software suite to gather and manage sustainability data across more than 300 data centers worldwide, the two companies disclosed today.
• June 2023: evroc, a startup backed by EQT Ventures and Norrsken VC, is striving to build Europe's first sovereign hyperscale cloud business that leverages sustainable energy, the company said.

Additional Green Data Center Milestones

Additional worldwide developments include:

• United States: Climate Adaptive Infrastructure (CAI), through a relationship with DigitalBridge, plans to invest up to $300 million in sustainable digital infrastructure. The first investment involves Switch, a 100% renewable-powered data center provider.
• Latin America: Aligned Data Centers in May 2023 completed the acquisition of Latin America data center provider ODATA. Roughly 85% to 90% of the energy consumed by ODATA is renewable. The M&A deal was first announced in December 2022. Financial terms were not disclosed.
• Africa: Raxio Data Centres has lined up a US$170 million debt facility to further expand operations across Africa. The twist? The debt facility -- involving Roha Group, Meridiam, Proparco and the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund -- is tied to various sustainability and ESG (environmental, social & governance) goals.
• Brazil: Scala Data Centers has achieved 100% Scope 3, as recommended by the GHG Protocol.
• Europe: AQ Compute and CBRE in 2022 partnered as part of a push to make AQ Compute a "pan-European leader in providing global clients with data centre services." All of the AQ Compute data centers are expected to leverage 100 % renewable energy, the companies said.
• Europe: Alces Flight and EcoDataCenter partnered to provide customers with "best-of-breed managed services and sustainable computing for their private research clouds," the two companies said.

Related: Track all green data center news here.