Newcastle Data Centre Achieves BREEAM Excellence

The first of two new data centres at Cobalt Park in Newcastle has been named as one of the greenest in the United Kingdom, after being awarded a BREEAM Excellent rating at the design stage.

The new facility, known as DC1, was assessed against a broad range of environmental impacts, including energy, pollution, land use and materials, achieving an overall score of 75.78 percent. The centre is also on track to achieve a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) energy efficiency rating of less than 1.3, the company claimed.

“Data centres, due to the nature of their activity, are very heavy users of energy,” explained Guy Marsden of development company Highbridge Properties. “We have estimated that by designing and building DC1 to BREEAM Excellent standard, energy use can be cut by more than half compared to a conventional new build facility.

“This is very important in today’s market as many corporates who use data centres have strict carbon emission and sustainability targets they have to meet and a data centre that helps them hit these targets rather than hinder them is an appealing prospect,” he added.

BREEAM rates carbon impact

The BREEAM rating scheme for buildings, from the Building Research Establishment (BRE Global), was extended to cover data centres back in June. The BREEAM data centre scheme is intended to help organisations assess the environmental impact of their data centre, and cope with increasing pressure for zero-carbon buildings.

“The BREEAM Excellent rating is a measure of our ongoing commitment to developing and investing in quality built environment projects in the North East, and I’m delighted that our DC1 is pushing the envelope for sustainable data centres in the UK,” said Marsden. The final BREEAM award will be announced once the post-construction assessment is completed.

British data centre managers have undoubtedly been upping their efforts to provide low-carbon, eco-friendly facilities for their customers. Earlier in the year, IT services provider Blue Chip opened a five-acre data centre site in Bedfordshire, which has been designed to offer the most up-to-date eco-friendly technology in the UK – using half the energy of data centres of a similar size.

Meanwhile, Next Generation Data (NGD) Europe, based in Newport, claims to be the only data centre operator in Europe to run a facility on 100 percent renewable energy; and the Telehouse West data centre in East London uses at least 10 percent renewable energy, and provides heat to the surrounding housing developments.

Industry standard

While there are many different schemes providing targets and baselines to guide strategic improvements in data centre management – such as BREEAM and PUE – there still lacks an industry-wide standard for carbon reduction. With the introduction of the government’s Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme earlier this year, the demand for such a standard is increasing.

However, according to Roy Illsley, senior analyst at research company Ovum, this is unlikely to happen. “Data centre providers in particular are very reticent to share best practice and possibly competitive advantage,” he said.