The changing face of data center sustainability

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Our latest blog from Director of Energy & Sustainability, Chris Pennington, features his thoughts on our recent sustainability report and how the data center industry has changed and matured over the past decade.

July 11, 20257 min read

The changing face of data center sustainability

Chris Pennington, Director of Energy & Sustainability, Iron Mountain Data Centers

We recently published our 2024 Sustainability Performance Overview, and it made me reflect on the way in which our industry’s best efforts to meet sustainable targets have matured and changed over the years. While sustainability initiatives don’t ever end, and every development builds on what has gone before, I think the last decade can be divided into three phases.

Phase one: recognising the problem

In 2016, the Paris Climate Agreement was a powerful statement that climate change is a serious threat. Our industry recognised that as aggregators of power for our customers, we could play an important role in tackling the climate crisis. So in 2017, Iron Mountain Data Centers (IMDC) switched to renewable power using virtual Power Purchase Agreements (vPPAs) to cover 100% of our footprint. We were among the first global providers to do this, and it helped us make a strong, simple proposition to our customers; that if you partner with us you can make a positive contribution to solving the climate challenge.

Phase two: pledges & promises

From around 2018 - 2022 our approach to the challenge became more science-based and concrete. New organisations emerged to help accelerate and quantify progress, and many of the largest and most forward-looking IT businesses committed to ambitious climate targets.

The focus of two in particular - Google and Microsoft - was on sourcing 100% carbon-free electricity at the point of use, 24 hours a day 7 days a week, in support of the UN’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact (24/7 CFE). For IMDC, our signature of the Compact in 2020 was followed closely by the installation of the largest data center solar array in the US in New Jersey, and we signed the Climate Pledge and the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact soon after. We have been adding on-site tracking of renewables and local clean energy suppliers ever since, with a target of hourly-tracked 100% clean energy by 2040.

We are still one of the few operators to have made this commitment, but this path is one which I believe more operators will follow soon in order to make the industry’s commitment to renewables a practical, local, reality and align with potential updates to greenhouse gas accounting.

Whether for vPPAs or 24/7 CFE, encouraging renewables has been key to reaching those targets, and today data centers are the largest single force in renewable purchases (source IEA: Energy and AI, p. 226). This has played an enormous part in the stunning growth of renewable power projects - something our industry should be proud of.

The Changing Face of Data Center Sustainability Graph

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Iron Mountain Data Centers [IMDC] recently published their 2024 Sustainability Performance Overview which tracks their latest improvements against key sustainability metrics as well as innovations in battery storage and tidal power, plus progress towards 100% hour-by-hour local clean energy (#247CFE).

Phase three: performance & progress

In 2022 we entered a more mature and collaborative phase, where the focus is to know our true performance, share the progress we have made and continue to develop solutions and standards. Decarbonization is a team sport in which we can all play a role, the rules are consistent and the score is clear.

For example, to measure energy efficiency using Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) we built a foundational compliance program that maintains ISO 50001 (Energy Management) and ISO 14001 (Environmental Management) accreditations, and deployed this worldwide. We also added ISO 14064 (GHG measurement) accreditation globally to convey credibility in our emissions reporting.

Making progress towards our 24/7 CFE target has required the rollout of hour-by-hour tracking across our footprint, and a restructuring of the way we buy power in order to demonstrate progress towards advanced decarbonization. By 2024, as set out in more detail in our Sustainability Performance Overview, we had rolled out our CFE hourly tracking capability to 16 sites, over half of our global footprint. While tracking hourly matched clean energy is still an emerging practice, the data we’re collecting enabled us to report over 97% of the hours at four of our US data centers were matched with locally produced clean power. This is an extremely encouraging indicator of what aggressive decarbonization can achieve by focusing on more granular data.

We also focused our attention on the reduction of negative environmental impact at the design and build stage, making a global commitment to the BREEAM sustainable building certification for all new facilities. In 2024 we achieved this target ahead of schedule, with three BREEAM-certified facilities completed and ten underway or at the design stage. Focusing new designs not only on energy efficiency, but also on the building materials used, impact on local ecology and controls to manage construction and use of the site will ensure that our data centers are supporting a more sustainable digital future. Here again, we’re capturing more data in order to demonstrate performance and progress.

What lays ahead: changing the power paradigm

Having made commitments, set targets, and demonstrated progress we’re now arriving at the beginning of a new chapter in which we need to modify the power paradigm of how data centers and the grid interact. Phase four might be called Disruptive Progress, with large energy users focusing more on how to use clean power instead of simply buying it. For example, aligning energy consumption with times of day when clean energy resources are abundant can catalyze accelerated progress for the clean energy transition.

Power-intensive AI, which has the promise to bring extraordinary value to humankind, is causing data center operators to think more like grid operators, focusing on solutions that match generation with demand to achieve high reliability and lower cost. These two sectors, utilities and data centers, move at vastly different speeds and I’m encouraged by the level of collaboration that is beginning to emerge. Moving quickly, data centers are poised to bring grid-level solutions faster, and we see that for example with the growing support to accelerate nuclear power generation.

For IMDC’s part, we made progress last year on developing load flexibility to support local grids, by continuing progress on Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). Our first system, in New Jersey, will incorporate a battery equal in size to the facility’s load, enabling it to effectively disappear from the power grid for hours when the grid is under duress, and charge when clean energy is abundant. For power generation, we’ve also collaborated on a tidal project in the Netherlands as a source of round-the-clock prime power for that local grid. Grid interaction - using our scale ‘behind the meter’ to add grid resilience and trade in self-generated dispatchable power - will be the next step to support the energy transition.

Data center sustainability is coming of age

Once considered exceptional or ambitious, the elements that make data centers more sustainable are quickly becoming standard practice. Energy efficiency, water use and carbon emissions are regulatory reporting items in many markets and table stakes for the industry. I’m greatly encouraged by the collaboration we see within our industry, sharing innovative ideas and current best practices. Perhaps we’re recognizing an evolution in the term sustainability itself: once focused on the preservation of natural resources (being ‘green’) it is now thought of more as the ‘ability to continue to thrive’. We do more sustainable things in order to enable our future for the decades to come. I’m excited for the continued journey ahead and to see how the industry continues to evolve.

You can read the full IMDC 2024 Sustainability Performance Overview.

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