Decarbonising data centres – FinTech Futures

One of the things I wrote earlier was a data center proposed by Meta in the Netherlands.

Many FIs are currently trying to utilize external data centers to reduce emissions.

It made me think about FI and whether I’m doing anything in the infrastructure to meet the Net Zero goal. What I know about the data center can be written on stamps. So I made a phone call answered by data center providers Adrian Mountstephens and Eleni Coldrey of Equinix.

My discussion with Adrian and Eleni was fascinating, and what was clear was that there were sudden and seismic changes in the market.

A year ago, a large FI asked data center providers to share their sustainability credentials, primarily as a boxtick exercise to demonstrate best practices. The RFP is a great example, and there are many boxes to enter with a checkmark, but there is no big idea behind the boxes themselves.

However, according to Adrian, there have been some major changes from EU-based FIs in the last few months. Banks, payment processors, and ISVs with significant investment and IT infrastructure in their data centers are now demanding:

“How can I reduce greenhouse gas emissions by moving workloads from an on-premises data center to the same location as the data center provider?”

Rapid step change. Away from box ticks, we help quantify the emissions reductions achieved by modernizing IT infrastructure. The new hardware and software platforms are power efficient and easy to cool. FI is currently moving operations to these.

The factors driving this are:

Large FIs are currently reporting Scope 1 and 2 emissions and are committed to reducing them. The commitment is in line with the EU’s net neutrality 2050 target. However, many of these organizations have also set goals for 2030, and 2030 is just around the corner. Perhaps only one hardware cycle is updated, so time itself is the driving force. Regulations also come from the EU, such as the EU Classification, which aims to promote consistency and transparency in the way FI reports its activities.

However, there is an interesting point here. The FI Sustainability team is working closely with the fact that IT workloads moved from on-premises data centers (Scope 1 and 2) to colocation data centers or public clouds (AWS / Azure, etc.) will be scoped. .. 3. Scope 3 reporting is not currently required, which reduces reporting requirements.

This fact means that sustainability teams are putting pressure on business CIOs / CTOs to move away from on-premises data centers to reduce scope 1/2. This provides a quick way to achieve a sustainable victory. This is the first time for an IT infrastructure and has never seen IT as a quick win over anything.

Today, CIOs and CTOs have sustainability goals and are aware of the benefits of moving their workloads to the data center and cloud to Scope 3. You may be wondering, but this isn’t greenwashing at all, as this move simply shifts responsibility to the data center. This will be scopes 1 and 2, so it will be a provider. Companies such as Equinix (and cloud providers) also publicly report all scopes 1 and 2 and have a neutral target for 2030. In fact, data center providers are trying to self-regulate and meet EU sustainability goals. For more information on this, it is worth considering the Climate Neutrality Agreement of the European Data Center Association.

FI is trying to modernize an application or feature and understand whether it will be moved from on-premises to a co-located data center and whether it will help achieve valuable savings.

This often involves discussions about the PUE (Power Utilization Efficiency) of a particular data center. In layman’s terms, PUE is defined as how efficiently the data center converts the power from the door into the power it supplies to the customer’s equipment. The ideal PUE is 1. Therefore, a facility PUE of 2 indicates that the amount of power used to run the IT equipment is half the power consumed by the entire data center facility.

Another interesting trend is the emergence of the circular economy. For FI, how and when FI and data center providers recycle their hardware is becoming increasingly important.

According to Eleni, this is a very recent phenomenon, and last year she had no conversation of this kind with anyone.

Data center providers are under pressure from “green” investors and their customers and are self-regulating. This sandwich means that companies such as Equinix have set a neutral goal for 2030.

They are under pressure to build the most efficient data centers. For Equinix, the new facility is designed at 1.2 PUE. There is a huge investment in equipment to modernize the power and cooling infrastructure to make the building more efficient.

Increasingly, data centers are using 100% renewable energy. This can cause problems. For example, the Dutch data center mentioned above. Data center providers need to be aware of the impact of renewable energy use on local infrastructure, and progressive data center operators are willing to invest in local grids to ensure long-term supply. I am considering a PPA (Power Purchase Agreement).

To that end, Equinix has a new data center in Silicon Valley, using hydrogen fuel cells as its main power source. This is completely off-the-grid.

It’s incredible how fast the market is moving and how companies are currently working on carbon reduction plans. It is also encouraging to see CIOs and CTOs reach their sustainability goals and drive real change. According to a recent Equinix survey, 65% of technical decision makers work only with IT partners who can meet key carbon reduction goals.

About the author

Dave Wallace is a user experience and marketing expert who has helped financial services companies design, launch and evolve digital customer experiences for the past 25 years.

He is a passionate customer advocate, champion and successful entrepreneur.

Follow him on Twitter @davejvwallace Connect with him LinkedIn..