Energy saving at data hotels

In the upcoming years Amsterdam and the ICT sector will work together to drastically reduce the energy consumption of data hotels. This decision was stimulated by the research report ‘Energy saving at data hotels’ published by the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN). ECN’s deputy director Kees van der Klein presented the report to Amsterdam's alderman Vos during the launch of the Green IT project on Wednesday April 16th.

The ICT sector accounts for 7.5% of overall power consumption in the Netherlands, making it one of the larger consumers of electricity. Data hotels in particular – centres for data traffic and storage – consume a considerable amount of electricity. Together with the server rooms in office buildings, data hotel electricity consumption is equivalent to that of 875,000 households. By using innovative technologies, the energy saving that can be achieved within data hotels is comparable to the power consumption of 100,000 households. The energy savings can even be doubled if the measures are also implemented in the server rooms of offices. These are the conclusions of the ECN research report commissioned by the Municipality of Amsterdam.

The report also provides an impetus for criteria to compare the energy efficiency of data hotels. An indicator for this purpose might be used in the future by the competent authority (municipality or province) to evaluate data hotels. Companies that develop data hotels have already responded positively to the ECN report. They have indicated that they consider the proposed norm of 1.3 eue (energy usage effectiveness) to be ‘strict’, yet attainable. ‘This will enable us to get going’, says an employee from data centre Wenckebach.

The Green IT project is the result of the municipality’s ambitious target to reduce CO2 emissions by 40% of the 1990 levels by 2025. This target is feasible providing climate coalitions can be forged in various areas. The ICT branch is strongly represented in the Amsterdam area, and technological innovations in this field can provide a significant contribution to the reduction targets.

Niels Sijpheer, the author of the report, comments on the importance of his research: ‘Now that the ICT sector is flourishing again and the environment and energy consumption are daily news items, it is vital that possibilities to reduce energy consumption in this sector are brought to the attention of the public. This will not only benefit the environment, but also business operations within the ICT sector. Energy, after all, costs money and is becoming increasingly expensive. Energy conservation in the ICT sector is therefore not only interesting from an environmental aspect, but also from an economic one.

A Dutch version of the report can be downloaded from the ECN website. The English version of this report will be available shortly.
http://www.ecn.nl/publicaties/default.aspx?nr=ECN-E--08-019

For more information about Green IT, please contact:
Robert Wichink
Tel. +31 (0)20 552 2345 or +31 (0)6 2259 3574

For more information about the ECN research report, please contact:
Niels Sijpheer
sijpheer@ecn.nl
Tel. +31 (0)224 564 988