Has anyone here run an LCA (or LCAs) for a data center? If so, would you be willing to share any findings? (opportunities for reduction specific to this typology, GWP intensity / m2, etc.)
I realize that actual impacts for any project will be very specific to its materials and quantities, and that it is important to join CLF’s upcoming benchmarking 2.0 (we are!).
In this case, I’m just trying to get an idea of what’s out there so that we can demonstrate aspirational potential for impact reduction for project at an early stage, prior to having much takeoff or material-specific information.
Clarifying here. Strategies, best practices, takeaways, and the like would be the most useful thing here. A GWP intensity would be interesting, but less of a focus.
Curious if we have EPDs for server equipment and the likes?
Going to go out on a limb and say B6: Operational Energy is the dominating piece of the pie on Data Centers. Emobodied is going to be so tiny unless you are able to offset dirty grid energy use with renewables.
I know it got abandoned and data hasn’t been updated since 2015, but Google supported Project Quartz for a while specifically to get at this question for their data center development (https://quartzproject.org/)
Starting to see some EPDs on EC3 about data cabling. Lot of mechanical systems as well, I believe. Would be interesting to see the contribution of all the supporting systems.
Hoping these will increase noticeably over the coming few years, as a few of Building Transparency’s supporters have interest in reducing the impacts of EC and OC in data centers.
Check out this vendor to get real-time energy usage, mix, and OC for your racks in a DC…https://nzero.com/.
Their API has been quite helpful for my client’s (a SAS provider) energy reduction goals