SUSTAINABILITY
to greenwash their operations , while still turning a profit .
“ While carbon offsetting and credits may have a role to play and can have an impact , greenwashing is still a significant problem ,” says Cantrell , adding that the quality of the individual credits purchased can vary hugely . Companies making little or no effort to reduce their emissions , instead relying solely on carbon offsets of little real value , yet still claiming to be at carbon zero , pose a significant problem . “ The cost of greenwashing is extremely high , and it ’ s imperative that carbon credits aren ’ t used as a substitute for genuine sustainability efforts ,” he adds .
However , Scott Wilson - Black & White Engineering ’ s Global Head of Building Physics and UK sustainability lead - is among those who assert the problem of carbon credits in the data centre industry is overblown . “ In buildings with lower energy demands , such as commercial offices , it is often the case that it ’ s more economical to pay for carbon offsets to bring your building to net zero carbon than it is to make the required design changes to reduce the operational and embodied carbon ,” he says . “ This is not the case for data centres .”
Because of data centres ’ high energy consumption , Wilson explains that it ’ s not economical for large-scale sites to rely on carbon credits to greenwash their energy consumption , as “ even with relatively low offsets prices per tonne , the price bringing a building to net zero with credits and offsets alone could be well in excess of £ 1mn a year .”
It ’ s hard to gauge just how much revenue an individual hyperscale data centre provides , and therefore how much of a hit £ 1mn per hyperscale site actually represents for a large scale operator .
Just as a ( very rough ) calculation , however , one of the world ’ s largest data centre operators reported total revenues of US $ 1.1bn in 2020 and owns approximately 280 data centres .
It ’ s a facile assertion to say that each of its data centres netted the company slightly in excess of US $ 3.8mn , but it ’ s about as useful as using the fact that a data centre operator wouldn ’ t spend a third of its revenue per site to completely eliminate its carbon footprint to disprove the idea that using carbon offsets and credits to shave a few percent of a site ’ s total emissions off here and there isn ’ t reducing the urgency with which operators tackle going green . datacentremagazine . com 87