Data centres are a core element of the IT infrastructure supporting digital transformation. They contribute to a sustainable economy by improving the efficiency along the value creation chain. Nevertheless, data centres consume a significant amount of energy and other resources and are, as a result, also at risk in terms of their environmental sustainability. Due to emerging technologies and applications such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the resource consumption of data centres is constantly increasing.
Data centres have a notoriously high demand of resources: the massively increasing demand for IT services of all kinds continues to lead to rising consumption of (among others) electricity, water and refrigerants. Therefore, it is part of the daily business of a data centre operator to optimise facilities and infrastructures in terms of energy consumption and thus improve the environmental sustainability of the data centre.