Building Sustainable Data Centers: Innovations in Construction and Energy Use

The construction of larger, more powerful data centers – driven by the increasing demand for AI-powered applications and compute capabilities – is putting a renewed focus on data center sustainability.

This rising demand for data centers is poised to significantly increase global electricity consumption, with a Department of Energy (DOE) report highlighting skyrocketing data center power demands.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts electricity demand from data centers could more than double in just three years, equating to the power needs of an entire country such as Germany.

Globally, the power requirements of data centers could grow by 160% by 2030, increasing their share of electricity consumption to 3-4%.

This shift underscores the need for sustainable solutions to meet growing power demands and mitigate environmental impact – not just in power consumption, but in the embedded carbon of data center construction.

Amid soaring demands, data centers have been exploring a wide range of innovative sustainability strategies spanning both construction and operation. Meanwhile, the push for adaptive reuse is helping minimize the industry’s environmental impact.

As regulatory pressures mount and the demand for sustainable solutions intensifies, a multifaceted approach is critical in steering the industry toward a more sustainable future.

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Sustainable Strategies for Next-Gen Data Centers

Sustainable materials and energy sources, embedded and lifecycle emissions, and the role of adaptive reuse are all part of the data center sustainability conversation.

Regulatory pressure is also intensifying, particularly in Europe, where the Carbon Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) mandates large companies to measure, report, and reduce their carbon footprints.

“Similar regulations are being explored in the US, with states like California and Oregon leading the way,” says Alpesh Saraiya, Honeywell’s senior director, data center and industrial verticals.

Honeywell is working with data centers to implement low-global-warming refrigerants and other solutions to reduce emissions while staying compliant with evolving standards.

Saraiya said data centers are adopting alternative fuels and advanced technologies to meet increasing regulations aimed at lowering CO2 emissions.

For example, hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO) can be used as a renewable diesel fuel, derived from hydrogenation and hydrocracking of different feedstocks including rapeseed oil and waste cooking oil.

“Diesel generators, often viewed negatively, can be adapted to use non-petroleum fuels,” he says, emphasizing that while diesel generators are primarily used for emergencies, they still attract scrutiny from building codes.

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Data centers are also utilizing AI and machine learning to optimize energy use, particularly in HVAC systems.

“The first step to reducing CO2 output is measuring it, followed by optimization using AI-driven systems,” says Saraiya.

Automation helps reduce human error, a common cause of downtime, while improving energy efficiency.

Innovations in green concrete are essential to reducing the carbon footprint of data center construction (Image: Alamy)

Net Zero Remains a Challenge

Jackson Metcalf, global leader of Gensler's critical facilities practice, says that while data centers consume significant energy, they do so far more efficiently than other commercial buildings.

“Data centers are not wasteful consumers; they use every last bit of energy because it’s costly,” says Metcalf.

Their mechanical and electrical systems are among the most efficient, designed to minimize waste and maximize output.

He argues that when it comes to sustainability, the industry is already moving in the right direction.

“Operational carbon can be reduced significantly in modern data centers, thanks to advancements in cooling technologies like liquid cooling, which are more efficient than traditional air cooling,” says Metcalf.

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However, reaching net zero energy or carbon remains a challenge.

Another critical factor is measuring embodied carbon – the carbon footprint of the materials used in construction.

Data centers rely heavily on steel and concrete, which have high embodied carbon.

“Reducing the carbon content of these materials is crucial for sustainable data center construction,” he says.

Innovations in building materials, such as cross-laminated timber, are being explored, but Metcalf said the focus should remain on improving the carbon efficiency of steel and concrete to make meaningful progress.

Liquid Cooling Drives Efficiency Gains

Rob Coyle, data center facilities project lead with the Open Compute Project (OCP foundation), says the power demands for data centers will continue to grow, but efficiency improvements can help slow that increase.

“We can slow the rise by developing more efficient power manipulation techniques,” he says.

One key area of focus is stepping down the voltage. Power enters a data center at high voltage, often around 440 volts, but server circuitry typically requires less than five volts. Inefficient voltage step-down processes can lead to significant waste.

“There’s a lot of effort in the OCP community to find better ways of stepping down voltage and distributing power without losses,” Coyle says.

Cooling is another area of focus, as most data centers today rely on air cooling, but there’s a growing shift towards liquid cooling – a move that requires new infrastructure but carries with it significant advantages.

Liquid cooling is far more efficient in using energy for computation instead of chiller or air-cooled systems.

Cliff Grossner, OCP’s vice president of market intelligence, explains data centers have historically allocated 30% or more of their energy to cooling systems, with only 70% used for actual computational tasks.

“With AI workloads generating more heat, chips either need to operate more efficiently or rely on liquid cooling,” he says.

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Phill Lawson-Shanks, chief innovation officer at Aligned Data Centers, says rack density is a critical factor in data center efficiency, with power requirements per rack steadily increasing.

“Historically, power densities ranged from 7 to 20 kilowatts per cabinet, but now we can reach 50 kilowatts using just air cooling,” he says.

This allows clients to use significantly less material and floor space. For example, delivering one megawatt of power previously required 256 cabinets; now, it can be done with just 20.

However, as the latest GPU clusters push density even higher – up to 120 kilowatts per cabinet – liquid cooling becomes essential.

“For these high-performance systems, liquid cooling is the only way to manage the heat effectively,” Lawson-Shanks says.

He noted that air cooling still plays a role, with a hybrid approach of liquid cooling and air cooling necessary into the foreseeable future.

“Liquid cooling removes heat from the chips, but around 20-30 percent of the system still requires air cooling,” he said.

Grossner notes the growth in the number of stakeholders participating in OCP’s cooling environments and sustainability projects has grown substantially, with a lot of hyperscale representation.

“They are coming together in a collaborative way, realizing they have to solve these problems,” he says.

Vertiv’s modular wooden data center, TimberMod (Image: Vertiv)

Green Concrete, Cross-Laminated Timber

Andrew Volz, research manager, project and development services for JLL, a real estate and investment advisor, explains the environmental impact of concrete, especially in the data center industry, is a growing concern due to its carbon-intensive production process.

Concrete, a fundamental material in construction, accounts for 8% to 11% of global carbon emissions, primarily from Portland cement production.

The process of calcination, which requires intense heating and results in significant carbon emissions, plays a major role.

“Concrete is an incredibly important material, but it’s also one that’s incredibly carbon-heavy,” Volz says.

He points out the sheer volume of concrete used in data centers is a challenge, with many of these facilities cover a million square feet or more, leading to significant embodied carbon emissions.

“The total volume of emissions from concrete in a single data center is equivalent to about three million gallons of gasoline being burned,” Volz says.

With data center construction rapidly expanding, particularly in the colocation sector, the carbon footprint from these materials is only increasing.

Efforts to mitigate this environmental impact are underway, with a focus on “greening” concrete through additives and carbon capture techniques.

These innovations aim to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete without compromising its structural integrity.

“We can get carbon down quite a bit by using different admixtures and processes, but scalability and availability remain challenges,” Volz says.

Local sourcing of materials further complicates these efforts, as the availability of green concrete can vary widely by region.

Cameron Lassiter, Aligned Data Center’s director of architectural design, explains while steel and concrete remain the dominant materials for data center construction, the industry is exploring more sustainable alternatives--though challenges remain.

“We’re not going to see laminated wood data centers anytime soon,” Lassiter says, adding that steel and concrete will likely dominate for the foreseeable future.

However, he emphasizes new materials like cross-laminated timber (CLT) are being considered.

“There are manufacturers coming online with products like CLT, but they’re not always operating at the scale we need,” Lassiter says.

The limitation often lies in the supply chain, not the material itself—like green concrete, this includes issues around the availability of materials, electrical equipment, and power infrastructure.

“Our industry is pushing many of these things to the limit,” Lassiter says.

Despite these challenges, he highlights a promising solution Aligned developed: a proprietary building envelope system with roughly 20% of the embodied carbon footprint of typical precast concrete – although he admitted this concept also faced supply chain issues.

Transforming old warehouses into data centers highlights the potential of adaptive reuse in creating sustainable infrastructure (Image: Alamy)

The Benefits (and Limitations) of Adaptive Reuse

The work-from-home revolution spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic poses a major challenge to city centers. But this is one that may benefit the in-demand data center industry.

The US office vacancy rate reached a historic high of 20.1% in the second quarter of 2024, breaking the 20% barrier for the first time and marking the third consecutive record-breaking quarter, according to a July report from Moody’s Analytics.

With office-to-residential conversations offering only a partial solution to the unused glut of office space, Metcalf proposes some of these downtown office blocks, with their large open-span floorplates, might be ideal locations to host edge data centers.

“Data centers are a really fascinating approach for repurposing downtown office buildings,” he says.

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Certain areas of downtown in Metcalf’s home city of Chicago, particularly the financial districts, are uniquely positioned to accommodate this transformation.

“These buildings are surprisingly well suited for some degree of data center conversion,” he says.

One key advantage of these high-rise office buildings is their robust infrastructure. Many were built with trading floors and other high-demand utilities in mind, making them particularly resilient when it comes to electrical systems and fiber connections.

“They probably have very resilient electrical systems because many of them have trading floors,” says Metcalf. “So, the buildings are well connected to fiber and could be ideal for data centers.”

However, Metcalf cautions that this wouldn’t mean converting entire skyscrapers into data centers. Instead, the approach would be more selective.

“It doesn’t mean we’re going to turn a 50-story high rise into 50 stories of data center,” says Metcalf. “But there could be a few banking floors that make sense for this kind of conversion.”

He adds data centers are “very polite tenants” that don’t cause a lot of disturbances, aside from occasional generator use.

“While they may produce some environmental noise, data centers are generally considered good neighbors in urban settings,” he says. “This makes them a practical element in mixed-use projects.”

Metcalf emphasizes the importance of designing data centers themselves with future adaptability in mind, suggesting developers consider designing data centers with taller floor-to-ceiling heights, like 30 feet, so they could easily be converted into commercial office spaces later.

“Building for flexibility now prevents future waste,” says Metcalf.

By pre-provisioning for possible future uses, developers can ensure that structures remain useful, even if data centers are no longer needed.

“We can’t predict the future, but we can plan better for it,” adds Metcalf.