The Circular Data Centre Compass – modelling and assessing data centre sustainability

Abstract

Data centres (DC) house electrical and electronic data processing and storage equipment. The data centre industry has grown from zero in the late 1980s into a global service provider with over 7 million sites in 2021. This rapid sectoral growth presents many challenges to environmental, social, and economic sustainability including the generation of large quantities of e-waste, (which is exacerbated by an under-developed recycling infrastructure, and a limited market for second life products) and potential threat to material supply chains, specifically Critical Raw Materials. There is an urgent need to improve sectoral sustainability, which includes development of a Circular Economy. The CEDaCI (a Circular Economy for the Data Centre Industry) project was launched in 2018 to initiate this by demonstrating its viability though business case studies, physical prototypes and digital tools, a key example being the Circular Data Centre Compass (CDCC) – a unique online tool that includes original primary source data. This tool allows users to compare and assess the overall life cycle sustainability of different servers, the criticality of embodied materials and the circularity of current and proposed designs. Therefore, the CDCC improves overall life cycle management of data centres, which increases supply chain security and reduces risk of DC service interruption.