Designing sustainable data centres

The pace of change and growth in the development of data centres is significant, but how much scope is there to improve their sustainability credentials? 

Operational efficiency and power usage can deliver big wins. But what about material choices? How do good intentions make it to reality? Is there an argument that design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) could be adopted more widely? 

Putting the sustainability arguments to the test are Angela Vico Correas, director at studioNWA, Roy Andrade, technical director at Sweet Projects, Timo Hendy, technical director at Stantec, and Stephen Meleady, MEP director and sector lead for data centres at Stantec. Hosted by Graham Munday at Stantec.

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Transcript

The pace of change and growth in the development of data centres is significant, but how much scope is there to improve the sustainability credentials of their design and operation? Power usage is where big wins can be achieved. Clean energy efficient resources meet sustainability. Targets and reduce operational costs. Well, what about material choices in the design of these critical buildings? How do good intentions make it to reality? Is there an argument that designed for manufacture and assembly DFM A could be adopted more widely by this? Sector putting the sustainability arguments to the test for this edition of the scope, I'm joined by Angela Vico Carreras, a director with studio N.W.A, an architectural practise specialising in the design of data centres. Timo Hendy, a technical director in Stantec Civil and structural engineering team. Working on both new build and retrofit of data centres, Roy and Brady, a technical director for suite, projects a turn key construction company with an extensive track record in data centres, and Stephen Malady and MEP director with Stantec and our lead on mission critical facilities. I'm Graham Monday. Welcome to the scope, a podcast from Stan Tech, a global leader in sustainable engineering, architecture and environmental consulting. Timo Sustainability is at the forefront for data centres and we've seen a lot of new ideas coming from the industry, but there's a long way to go. Where should we be focusing in terms of data centre design? What's your your your 123 if you? Like.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess there are are three main areas you know within data centres where you can find efficient. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry you. Yeah. You can make them more ecologically sound. One is, you know, through the, UM, efficient building systems and the efficient technologies within the building that.

Efficiencies to bring. To make.

All the IT equipment and and you know main, you know, keep the IT equipment running. And one is the power that then feeds those systems and you know within these two areas there are clearly the biggest wins. As you know, they impact the operational carbon consumption of these buildings, which is where their biggest impact is, is felt and and then the source of power then is in the decarbonization. The grid which is, you know to a. Degree. Not part of the remit of the data centre provider themselves. And and more about the, you know, the wider grid.

Yeah. And Stephen, we're seeing examples of that, aren't we?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I think you're right, the MEP efficiency side has been widely interrogated in the past. I think there's a bit of a shift from a renewables perspective. I think historically there's been a lot of power purchaser agreements where people are looking at Green PA's. But certainly we're seeing more of a shift to people looking for sites close to renewable energy, source generation and clients. They're prioritising that in terms of their site. Selection.

So efficiency of the systems power and team over the third one embodied carbon, yes.

Yes, that's right. Yeah. And as a CSA designer on the, you know, design of the envelope of the building, obviously I would see this one as as key. This is the area where. You know architects and structural engineers can have the biggest impact because there isn't the obvious financial incentive there to deliver a low carbon building fabric, you know, with efficient systems comes as saving on energy bills and a saving on consumed energy and operational cost to the building, whereas often with. Building fabric carbon saving. There's actually a cost to implementing these technologies, you know. Whether that's more innovative materials or or other such ways of of changing? Yeah, the carbon.

If there is perhaps a a lack of understanding in the in the in the whole circle or the whole picture in that ultimately the the the. It's either addressing it at the forefront of the design, or it's at the back end of the design via well. I don't want to say penalties, but it's it's it's carbon related charges. There is an opportunity for the industry to do more with regards to embodied carbon on early days. Which can be a sale feature of the premise a A a good sales point and and one that would go really well with their own clients or tenants or end users. Admirers with all of the the. Statements and aspirations as. Well, and I guess it's.

Roy, I was gonna say, Roy, do you? You just come in here on this on this point?

Because ultimately, as we go to 2050, if we get to 2050, listening to the government announcements yesterday, we have to find how we cover our scope 3 and that scope 3 is currently being covered by offsetting and that offsetting can be much lowered if we first consider what we construct our buildings. From in the 1st place. So there is huge benefit for the future if we start. Now.

The team I want to come on to some examples from yourself in a minute, but Angela, can I just explore just a little further for our audience here as well. Embodied carbon concepts come forward, but they don't necessarily make it to to reality at the end is is what we're.

Saying there there is there is, there is an interest. From clients, there is an interest from the industry on this topic and so on. On designs the the embodied carbon gets looked at gets measured, gets real. Reported, but the the there is at present, not many briefs will contain a section on embodied carbon as part of the design requirements. And so whilst the the notion gets recorded in the in the packed design stage 2 or stage 3, or one to planning with a certain metric. The design brief and the design scopes do not preclude delivering that target, and so at further stages four or five, either because of fee or because of just losing focus of of that of that as an opportunity and the.

Yeah.

The the the results get diluted.

And before Timo, before we come to your examples and maybe you want to come in on this point, the question I'm going to ask is how do we overcome that?

Yeah, I mean, I guess you know, it's incumbent on us. You know, as the designers and the area where we can really add value is by showing our clients that these technologies that we are putting in front of them can actually be. That utopian Unicorn thing that saves them money, saves them time and saves material and carbon. And so the most effective ways that we found in delivering low carbon data centres is just by having very efficient design solutions, because they save on material. So the the contractor and the client happy from a monetary perspective.

Yeah.

But yeah, that that also then delivers massive carbon savings.

Have you got a couple of examples that you would? Like to share?

Yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah. So we've, you know, on a on a previous project we we saved 11,000 metres cubed of of concrete from the design by making slabs thin and reducing foundation size. Is. Which is I think something like 2 1/2 thousand round trip flights to New York from London and and we've had two two projects for for the same client and where we saved 25% and 30% of steel respectively on the two projects. One of those projects was a project that included four buildings and we could have bought a fifth. Built 1/5 building with the amount of steel that we saved in the four that we built, which was quite a fun challenge to deliver, but the the CO2 saving with saving all that steel is is enormous and the cost saving and time saving on site was also big. So it was a it was a win win and and an easy sell for us to the.

OK. But I mean, impressive results and impressive figures and it's about educating and sharing that.

Roy it it, it is and and the and the thing that will hit the mark quickest is where we as designers can show cost and time savings that will definitely affect the clients mindset and these are the sort of things building lean. Building. Off site and building efficiently is where we can save our carbon. A lot of that has to come from there, but it does take the designers to take that leap of faith to do that because there's some of the regulations that we have to build with or construct with does not make that easy. You know, we have some very rigid legislation and regulations that makes that difficult. Sometimes.

Yeah. Well, I mean and in addition to the legislation, there are the and tenant requirements and and and their specifications and they are sometimes unduly stringent and often don't get challenged by design.

Makes.

So you know, some of the the tenant loading requirements for example are misunderstood, miscommunicated over the top and that can lead to huge inefficiency and structural design. You know, with much bigger member sizes than needed and some of the tolerances and deflection criteria as well, which if we find an opportunity to flex those with the tenants. Then by you know, helping our clients to communicate that to the tenant, then we can find big savings that way.

Should we talk about new materials because we've been talking about, you know, exist. Testing stuff. What are we seeing in terms of new materials coming through and and how easy is it for the designers in the industry to navigate this? Timo, maybe you can talk about timber CLT.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, as ever, the US leading the way here and and Microsoft have made a bit of a a stir recently with their. New CLT Data Centre which is. You know, definitely a really positive step forward and and a huge opportunity for all of us to, yeah, see that material used more it it's great and and can be applied quite effectively. Yeah to this to this application you know some of the drawbacks. With CLT is that it when you use concrete and steel together, they work together to so the presence of the concrete reduces the amount of steel that you need. Without getting too technical. Sorry, but with CLT you can't do that as effectively. So you end up with more steel by using CLT. So there is a bit of a pay off there, but the. Overall, carbon equation still works well for CLT, but I think that in recognise. Using that we can see that there's possibly an opportunity to use CLT with steel in a different way to the way that we use concrete so that you can reduce both the steel and the CLT and and no one's really doing that at the moment. And I think that would be an interesting thing to explore. You know, structural systems that are designed around the use of steel and timber together.

In your world, Angela, how how does this play out? What are some of the challenges?

Yes, for for from our side the the challenges is that the industry tends to default to what they know it's it's what they have used before is what they their insurers approve is what. UM, it's also. Typically the the the requirements are very prescriptive, but occasionally on a project A. An alternative is permitted and then an and we have this this example where a particular anti blast wall is is forms part of the tenants requirements in in the description but they have consented and they have this this present that they have consented something less on us in another job. And so they would only accept that alternative and and and they will not want to move from from there. So it's very. Descriptive there is not a huge opportunity for new materials to break in. However, I think from an architectural point of view, the opportunity and construction point of view, the opportunity is on the FM A it's it's in the in the Assembly of. All of these existing all materials but into an off site construct.

But I think there are opportunities in things like aggregates, the new aggregates that are being developed, the the new cements that are being used, which are green credentials for those cements. I think they're a bit more expensive at the moment, but like everything else, the the prices come down with you tonight. And if we can actually get those specifications into our sys. Systems I think we have more efficiencies coming in. So we have to be brave as designers and engineers. We have to be brave and we have to put those things out there and and see how we can further that effort by other industries.

Yeah, for sure. I mean GBS is cement replacement is part of our standard specification now and and we roll it out as much as possible and all data centre sites that are within. You know. You know a reasonable distance of the source of of GBS and and you know that is a really great way of of air saving carbon and concrete. And but there there are new innovations in that arena such as concreting, which is the impregnation of concrete with graphene, which then allows you to remove all the rebar from the concrete and reduces the. Cement content by even more than GBS does so these kind of technology. He's a a burgeoning and there's a there's a risk associated with these new technologies that, you know, needs client buy in to be able to, you know, actually deliver them on a project.

But we have to, as designers, put. Model forward, we have to dictate to the clients of what is acceptable in.

Yeah, you.

The modern world.

OK. Yeah. Roy, I'm glad you covered that point, which was going to be my question, how do we make this happen? And it's by the sounds of things as design engineers and architects is being braver to to make the point and explain why. Now, Angela, you've you've brought us on to DFM a a moment ago. Designed for uh sorry. Designed for manufacture and assembly, let's just pick up on that point between you and I don't know who wants to lead off. On. That in terms of we see that in other part in other parts of the built environment, explain to me with the complexities of data centres how that could be used.

Oh, it's it's definitely a. A practise that can be implemented more broadly and there is a lot more than can be done. I think that the the risk progress in this area, I think we are perhaps. Victims of of of really rapid programmes, really strict. Briefs and perhaps not having enough opportunity to come, and all all of the all of the changes that we're discussing require for us, Stephen said. For for all the parties to to sit around the table and come to to to with the ability to negotiate on on those initial requirements and in in a lot of cases that opportunity. It's not there during the decline because the the scope is given. There's there is no time. Simply there is no time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The swiftness of the build and the is is causing the challenge. Talk to me about other aspects of these sites where that that it could still be deployed.

So I think we're seeing more of an uptake on it in other regions outside of the UK. I think we're seeing less in the UK. We're seeing other clients take it on how they're taking advantage of that as a bit of foresight in terms of template designs and applying those template designs across sites. So they get ahead of the curve in terms of that programme and that.

Hmm.

Yes.

Construction. I think the most most common application. In in the UK is in either services cassettes, so you see the services coming pre assembled in a in a box that can then just be hung from the. Planning. Mm-hmm. And then package plant rooms and drivetrain units. So the the drive train can be fully packaged and that's then bolted onto the side of the building. But what we don't see is DF made within the actual building fabric. So within the building structure and and what makes the floor plate and and and what have you. And I think that that's a possible opportunity. I mean, the current limitation there or the perceived limitation. Would say is because the spans are associated with data centres are quite long. You're talking clear spans of, you know 8 metres by 12 metres, which is too large to have a single component that can be constructed off site to come in and and serve that purpose. But if we were able to use dfma systems, that could be, you know, brought onto site assembled. And on the floor and then erected that would, you know, solve that issue. And I think one of the other key. Opportunities would be to to integrate the secondary systems of the building with the primary systems. So at the moment we we construct a floor plate which is the primary system and then we hang from it a secondary frame from which all of the services are suspended. And those two things are independent from one another and don't help each other. And they both need their own independent strength in order to serve the building, whereas in reality, if you were to bring them together into one, the FEMA unit. You would have something that's only doing the job once, so only using the material once as a huge opportunity for efficiency.

Because it, yeah, there's a huge opportunity there, particularly with some of the site locations that we're looking at in the UK outside the previous areas in industrial States and around London, we're seeing more remote sites where there's less local labour skills accommodation and there's constraints on the site around not just getting up. Operative to the site or from the area, but providing them with accommodation in the area or transport to the site. So about providing offsite fabrication and commissioning and assembly, we're reducing that constraint and pressure on the site and making it a bit easier for the end client and the contractors to develop that plan for the site.

Yeah.

And that's what that's what the. It's actually come in because you get to site the amount of labour and the safety that you admit or the risks of safety issues you admit by doing it in a factory is incredible. So you have to see that as a benefit all round for the construction period.

And then there's the quality control and the reduction in material wastage. You know, you know with with the the primary focus being you know on material saving, if you're not wasting.

Yeah, exactly, absolutely.

Thing you know that that that's, yeah, definitely a major benefit and and it it lends itself so well to these types of buildings because they are for the most part you know A10 metre cell that gets repeated 25 times. You know that that's generally what you're what what what the format is so you know and and and a lot of the vendors have their template cookie cutter design that they want to see implemented. As much as possible. So that design's already ready before the project is in inception. So if we were to take these ideas and apply them to the cookie cutter before the project exists, then you know we're ahead of the curve, the design. Is done.

Yeah.

Let's let's move on with the conversation in terms of what's on the horizon, what what should people be thinking about? Roy, we've had a conversation. You can see about scope 3 emissions, for example.

Well, the big the big challenge about sustainability and the net zero agenda now is everybody can say their scope one and two, it's reasonably easy to achieve and that we should be achieving that quite comfortably. However, Scope 3 is is the biggest issue as a contractor. We've done a measurement of our own. Scope 3 elements and all of our works accounted for 99.4% while SCOPE 3. Now that's our upstreams. Go free will be the clients. Downstreams go free. And therefore that all of that carbon has to be offset at some point. So just imagine how many tonnes of carbon if we move from the front end can be saved at the back. It is huge and we do need to consider Scope 3 which. Is not being widely addressed at the moment.

And and some of the stuff we talked about was buildings being too heavy, maybe because of codes and things like that, that.

And and this is goes back to our point. You know, as designers we're very traditional we we base it on our regulations, our legislation which is traditionally based on a solution that's already been predetermined. We've now got computer modelling softwares now that can actually bust that apart now. But yet we still go back to our our traditional ways of construction. We should be using our modern ways of calculations and and design to say yes, that was traditional, but now we can prove. That that. Need to but making the buildings lighter and and therefore making it a lean construction build and construction build is is definitely a huge potential for saving carbon.

OK.

Yeah, definitely. And using less materials, I think it's.

Yeah.

For example, when when when going through the planning process. Perhaps this this could be integrated even further it gets reported, but when we look at design options it it could be merit in analysing how they sit in the environment, how they contribute to, to the to the the building. I am. The building masses around them etcetera, but also what, what additional carbon footprint will that building now contribute to in, in if if delivering that specific form so?

Let's cover two other brief points. Then before we wrap here at Stephen AI and liquid cooling with something we've talked about as well.

Yeah, I think we touched on earlier how there's been a lot more exploration around efficiencies from an MVP. Perspective. But I think there's still opportunity there with some of the change in technology. So obviously high density racks are creating much more of a demand for liquid cooling within the space and that creates some opportunities to move from a historically air cooled system to a 75% liquid cooled system in the current arrangement, so. There's opportunity to eliminate some of the efficiencies associated with fan fan systems and the medium of cooling via air, so there's definitely opportunity moving forward to to reduce the energy use.

And can I just add on that because we're going to liquid cooling and the chips are able to accommodate higher temperatures, we got higher off temperatures from those chips. Yeah. And therefore, those higher off temperatures will assist us in our district heating plans. Because at the moment the temperatures all we get is pretty mundane, but if we can get another 5 to 10° out of those chips, it makes a huge effort to yeah to offsetting that.

Certainly, yeah. We've seen a historical shift from like umm 612° all the way to what we're seeing now, which is 2530, which opens up the door for more opportunity and distributing, yeah.

That's going to go higher. I think.

Yeah.

And Angela, is there a a brief moment here just to ask about district heating as well and the opportunity for that?

Yes. Well, I think as as as we're saying, there's huge potential to to that idea. And I think we all know this is this is still in the rear or lives in the realm of ideas here in the in the UK, whilst it has, it is realised in other areas of Europe, especially Northern Europe. They they seem to. Get a have gotten a good grip to to to the system, but over here at the moment is still in the realm of ideas either. Either. It would entail district heating systems, which is obviously a much more complicated notion, or this would require perhaps a big of a bigger notch from from the planning authorities towards private. Agreements between perhaps the residential and the industrial sectors.

Yeah, I'm I'm quite interested to see what the government's new AI growth zones and the plans they have to Co locate these data centres in in one area, what's going to happen from a a heat export perspective and what ideas they have around that and and what other building uses that they can put in those spaces to. To ensure that we're going to take.

Advantage of that and as a country, we do lack the infrastructure to get that distributed and that has to come from central in a lot of cases or you have to be incredibly lucky and find the heat consumer on your doorstep which is yes, it's a huge timing problem.

I mean.

So that's a big opportunity, isn't it, which requires more focus. Probably in and sponsorship from central government, but what I've heard from this conversation today is there's a lot of other things that with confidence from from the engineers in terms of designers and the architects pushing solutions to to clients and to operators and to developers. Can also help to ensure that this sector is as vibrant as it is in the UK, but also very sustainable as well. OK, thank you. Really good debate. Thank you. Thank you particularly to our guests. Angela from studio N.W.A and and and Roy from Sweets. Thank you as well to Timo and Steven for joining us too. Thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe to the scope on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts from, and you can find all of our episodes on the Stantec website.