Technological advances not only improve the speed and reliability of your data center, but they will also reduce your power consumption and help you reach your business’s sustainability goals. Over 40% of your data center’s power consumption is used to power and cool your equipment. By improving the data center supplies, hardware, power supply equipment, and power management controls, your data center could truly be green.

Here are three new opportunities in data center sustainability.ce

Green Construction

Construction materials have a big carbon footprint. Wood, steel rebar, and concrete require the release of massive amounts of carbon during production and shipping.

But new low-carbon construction materials have been developed to slow or even reverse this carbon release. For example, concrete requires large kilns to produce the cement that binds the aggregate together. These cement kilns release a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

New technologies draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and mineralize it. This mineralized carbon dioxide is then used to form concrete. Less cement is required and the concrete sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in your data center’s concrete walls.

Water Conservation

Water is a critical input for many data center cooling systems. But using drinking water to cool servers is wasteful. Many cooling systems are now designed to use gray water sources in your facility to cool servers. That way, gray water can be used for cooling before it is sent into the municipal wastewater treatment system. This reduces your water consumption without affecting the efficiency of your cooling system.

Some municipalities in Washington, Virginia, and Texas have supported this process by providing a municipal source of gray water for cooling systems.

Smart Energy Management

Power management technology has improved and will continue to improve. Your business can take advantage of these advances by reducing your power consumption and carbon footprint.

The power density of a data center is 100 times more than that of a large commercial office building or nine Wal-Mart-sized shopping centers. But data center power consumption is not always uniform. Managing power based on demand will reduce both power use and the demand on your cooling system.

Sustainability is not just a buzzword. It will need to become a core principle for both the environment and your bottom line. Contact LDP Associates, the provider of mission critical support solutions, for more information.