Pelio Planning LEED Data Center

Pelio & Associates is the latest developer to announce plans for a LEED-certified data center. Pelio said this week that it is planning to have its Santa Clara, Calif. data center project qualify as a "green" facility under the LEED certification system from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), according to the San Jose Mercury News. The Pelio project will eventually encompass 343,000 square feet of data center space at 1500 Space Park Drive in Santa Clara, which the developer acquired last summer. The first phase includes a retrofit of 50,800 square feet of existing structures on 7 acres of land. Pelio, which is based in Saratoga, Calif., developed a number of data centers in Santa Clara in the 1990s.

The announcement continues the trend toward energy-efficient data centers, which has been reflected in recent initiatives by IBM and the formation of The Green Grid.

The USGBC's LEED standard (short for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) was designed as a metric for commercial buildings rather, and has proven to be a difficult standard for data centers to meet without a significant office component. Only a handful of data centers have been certified under the LEED standard, including the Highmark Data Center in Pennsylvania and the FNMA Technology Center in Urbana, Md. But with the growing focus on energy efficiency in data centers, Pelio becomes the fourth group to announce its intention to have an upcoming project certified, along with 365 Main, Digital Realty Trust and the Los Angeles County government.