Executive Roundtable: Actionable Data Center Sustainability Strategies

Pat McGinn, CoolIT: Sustainability is no longer a secondary concern—it is a core driver of strategy for colocation and hyperscale data centers heading into 2025. Among the most critical considerations are energy efficiency, water conservation, and resource optimization.

Energy efficiency remains paramount as data centers strive to meet both rising power demands and stringent carbon reduction targets. Water conservation is equally pressing, especially as facilities expand into water-stressed regions where traditional cooling methods face growing scrutiny. 

Furthermore, the adoption of circular economy principles, including the repurposing of hardware and waste reduction, will play a growing role in advancing sustainability efforts.

As sustainability pressures intensify, the industry must also focus on systemic approaches—integrating renewable energy, leveraging data for operational efficiency, and engaging in cross-sector collaboration.

These actions are not just about meeting regulations; they are about future-proofing data center operations against environmental and economic risks.

Steve Zielke, Rehlko:  One very significant and influential trend that isn't discussed enough is Environmental Product Declarations (EPD). While they are incredibly useful for Scope 3 benchmarking, supply chain management, and even marketing strategy, EPDs simply aren’t common among data centers, their suppliers, or their equipment. Environmental product declarations (EPD) are important for two reasons. First, they offer standardization. EPDs are governed by strict standards and regulations, where product category rules issue comparable results because the calculation methods and reporting guidelines are the same. Through an EPD, a data center gains the assurance of information accuracy, enabling informed, confident choices when selecting a vendor.

The second reason EPDs are so valuable for data centers is the transparency they provide. No EPD can be created without a full lifecycle analysis. As a result, the EPD shows a data center operator what goes into a piece of equipment, how it's produced, and the environmental footprint related to every stage of production.

Phillip Marangella, EdgeConneX:  Key sustainability considerations for providers include: 
1.    Achieving 100% Carbon Free scope 1 and 2 targets to demonstrate commitment to tangible goals and KPI attainment (through green supply, REC/EACS, PPA, and other approved means).
2.    Calculating Water Usage Effectiveness (WuE) into the sustainability equation, given its increasing necessity to support the cooling of AI and high-density deployments.
3.    Evaluating and leveraging alternative carbon-free energy sources as an augmentative and primary power source.
4.    Continue to openly report on sustainability goals and achievements to be transparent as a company and as an industry, and demonstrate a real and concerted commitment to sustainability.

Steven Carlini, Schneider Electric:  Sourcing and running on zero carbon sources are a primary goal going forward. As more zero carbon capacity is built, data center operators will be first in line. 

Additionally, data center operators will collaborate with grid power providers to cooperate on supply and demand optimization. This means data center operators will strategically use on-site back up power sources – BESS (battery energy storage systems) to charge when being supplied with carbon free power and discharge when the grid is supplying fossil fuel-based power. 

Data center operators are at different parts of their sustainability journeys. Those trying to comply with impending regulations are focused on data gathering and reporting. Once they have this, they can put action plans together to reduce carbon output and water use. 

Those more advanced on their sustainability journey will focus on the supply chain and their providers to minimize their scope 3 emissions. This is a very large part of emissions for most companies and the most complicated to understand, report and mitigate. 

Danielle Rossi, Trane:  As we move closer to many companies’ 2030 goals, we are going to see a focus on retrofits and on more holistic planning for greenfield design. 

The significant droughts worldwide have forced a reassessment of many brownfield designs. We are seeing an increase in requests for retrofits of water-cooled chillers, in particular. Connecting the chillers to dry coolers, in place of cooling towers, closes the loop and limits the water use to the amount to fill the piping with no continual water usage. 

This change significantly helps overall WUE footprint. For greenfield designs, we are noticing this closed-loop design and the request for heat recovery much more frequently. Heat recovery, particularly with high density AI or liquid cooling, can be extremely beneficial to sustainability goals. 

Unfortunately, many people limit their planning to district heating which is hard to achieve without extremely high temperatures but there are many options for heat recovery depending on location and water temperature. Holistic planning and site selection are key to optimizing a heat recovery design.