LEED data centers?
May 3, 2011
I have been volunteering with the U.S. Green Building Council Colorado Chapter Metropolitan Branch in a number of committees for about a year and a half now (maybe even two years?). I am very passionate about Green Building in general, but mostly because the way I see it, the less energy, water, etc. we use, the greater chance we have of meeting the needs we have with the energy we are producing today. It makes it then even easier to generate green energy that can account for a larger percentage of what we produce/use. It just makes sense!
So, recently I’ve been reading quite a bit about green data centers and LEED, and I continue to be asked questions by folks I know about whether data centers can be LEED certified. There was an article that a fellow volunteer, Bill, sent me back in the fall of 2010. It talked about a data center IBM had in North Carolina that was certified LEED gold. What’s interesting to me about all of this is that USGBC hasn’t actually issued a new version that includes data centers yet (it’s actually in the works and reviews are going on now). So how can these data centers claim to be LEED certified? Well, ultimately, these data centers are buildings, so if the building can be certified, the data center can as well. I must admit, though, I’m really excited to see how the new version of LEED shakes things up a bit and excited about how my company can help with data center consulting in the process.
The same fellow volunteer also sent me an article from the Northern Colorado Business Report talking about HP’s “new” data center in Ft Collins. I put “new” in quotes because HP had that data center ready and running back when I still worked there (and I left in November of 2010). It just took a while for the press release to actually happen. This facility is really quite advanced. It uses some really great energy efficiency techniques (such as air side economization) to avoid having to air condition the room because the weather in Colorado is perfect for this kind of application. Mind you, this is also an R&D facility, so if anything goes down, all those salaried engineers will just have to log back in late at night to finish up their work when things are back online. 
No customer business is conducted in there at all. But, kudos to HP for doing it because they understand what is mission critical and what isn’t and play within those boundaries!
My new company’s CTO will actually be giving a free webinar this week on air-side and water-side economization in a data center. It should be quite educational in case you’d like to watch (either real-time or after the replay is available). It’s methods like economization that I think will play a big part when the new LEED version is available.
So, will you find LEED certified data centers now? Yes, but they are certified by the LEED version currently available which doesn’t specify data center specific items now. But it should be soon when the new version is available which will take into account many more data center specific issues. I am looking forward to it!
