The World's Most Sustainable Data Centre Opens in Frankfurt, Germany
1 Oct 2008
Photos : Christian Richters
Citi, the global financial services company opens its Arup Associates
designed New Data Centre in Frankfurt. The new building sets new standards
in sustainable design, set to bring about dramatic changes in the way
that energy-hungry data centres are designed and built in the future.
The Information and Communication Technology industry produces 2% of global
CO2 emissions, a figure equivalent to emissions from the aviation industry.
In addition energy usage in data centre continues to grow as a result
of developments in new, more powerful technology solutions. Therefore
efficient data centre design plays an important role in our drive to cut
carbon emissions. This exemplary building has the potential to change
the way that data centres approach energy efficient and sustainable design,
and this is perhaps the most important aspect of the building's realisation.
The Frankfurt Data Centre is a landmark green building. The environmentally-conscious
building, designed by British architectural practice Arup Associates for
Citi, has already been honoured for its ground breaking eco-friendly design.
Even before its completion, the project was awarded the Data Centre Excellence
Green Energy Efficiency Award 2007 and the title of Overall Winner at
the Financial Services Technology (FST) Magazine Awards 2008.
Built at Am Martinszehnten, some 10 km from Frankfurt city centre in the
northern district of Kalbach, Germany, the 100,000 sqft nett European
Data Centre is the first building in Germany that will achieve LEED accreditation,
attaining Gold standard and possible Platinum status, pending USGBC final
evaluation in October. It includes office space totaling some 16,000 sqft
and separate storage facilities. The building incorporates a raft of environmental
measures that achieve maximum sustainability with no compromise to operation
or reliability.
From an aesthetic perspective, the design of the complex is a combination
of intelligently designed inhabited spaces and extensive green planes,
the latter facilitating in the reduction of rainwater run off via harvesting
ponds. Landscaping includes generous green spaces throughout the site,
the built mass being set back from the site boundaries buffered to all
elevations with 'garden zones'. The physical enclosures are all treated
to affect future screening from surrounding buildings utilizing new indigenous
deciduous trees, hedges, greened walls or greened wire mesh fences.
However, the most radical green innovations, and those that have the most
impact on the data centre's environmental performance, are mostly hidden.
The facility is designed to operate continuously delivering critical services
24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 52 weeks a year. This is achieved by
using a combination of redundant or standby energy systems or 'live' duplicate
provisions of service. However, the buildings' energy use is greatly reduced
in relation to similar centres of the same type. The Frankfurt Centre
will use only 30% of the power required for services that a conventional
data centre would utilize and only 40% of the heating energy. This results
in an overall annual CO2 emission reduction of 11,750 t/a . Cooling water
consumption is also a major factor in this type of building, and, through
the use of innovative reverse osmosis water treatment in the cooling plant,
Arup Associates' design saves 35,950,000 litres per annum. Construction
techniques have also been refined to reduce waste and save time/costs.
Frankfurt Citi Data Centre building image / text received 011008
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: adrian welch / isabelle lomholt