INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE POWERED BY THE DCA
While compliance can be a pain for smaller organisations , larger global colocation and cloud operators will have specific staff for compliance tasks , however , the consensus is that there is too much individual legislation requiring attention .
and carbon emissions – it ’ s not focused on data centres but organisations that use colocation or cloud services . They are required to report all organisational energy and carbon emissions . Data centre operators get requests to provide an individual organisation ’ s Scope 3 emissions that are contained within a specific data centre .
This will cause angst within the data centre community . Most operators bill their customers in two ways , firstly for the rack – this includes the space and cooling . And secondly , for the energy used by that rack and IT equipment contained within . If an operator gets a request to provide this information , how are they going to get it ?
Energy Efficiency Directive
The final piece of legislation is the revision to the Energy Efficiency Directive ( EED ), first published in 2012 . This gave rise to the ESOS regulations and mandatory energy audits for qualifying organisations as defined under articles 7 and 8 . The recast and how it impacts data centres is currently undergoing a consultation exercise scheduled to end May 2024 . Recommendations or changes will commence in 2024 / 2025 .
The recast ( revised ) EED requires data centres of a certain size or above ( this lower limit has yet to be debated , some industry commentors have suggested 50Kw ) to report total energy consumption , the percentage derived from renewable energy , water usage and the amount of waste heat reused . This could accompany a mandatory data centre registry requirement in country or at EU level . There is also some debate about looking at IT equipment .
The purpose of the requirement for mandatory registration and reporting stems from a recommendation published in the Science Magazine in February 2020 and made three recommendations . The first ‘ Policy Support – Energy Efficiency Standards for IT Equipment ’ started with the EU Lot 9 requirements . The second was ‘ Investment in New Technologies ’ by operators – this could be immersed compute or smarter cooling systems and maybe investments in renewable energy . The final recommendation was ‘ public data and modelling ’ – this is clearly what the EED is trying to achieve .
There has already been push back on these proposals and for valid reasons , but the European Commission has been quite clear in its response to the climate emergency . In February 2020 , it stated : ‘ Data centres and telecommunications networks CAN and SHOULD be carbon neutral by 2030 ’.
Currently , the commercial data centre sector appears to think it can merely use or invest in renewable energy either via PPAs or via direct ownership of renewable energy schemes , but will this be enough ?
The following questions might be considered : What impact will all these EU directives have on the UK ? Do these directives coming out of Brussels only relate to countries within the EU ? How does this affect UK businesses and trade in the UK ?
These are areas worth considering and yes , the EU legislation does only apply to the EU .
The Retained EU Law ( Revocation and Reform ) Bill 2022 could render all aspects and updates to existing EU laws ( also applies to secondary legislation ) in the UK to expire automatically on December 31 unless preserved . This piece of legislation has greater impacts on UK society i . e . employment law .
The final piece of legislation is the revision to the Energy Efficiency Directive ( EED ), first published in 2012 . This gave rise to the ESOS regulations and mandatory energy audits for qualifying organisations as defined under articles 7 and 8 . The recast and how it impacts data centres is currently undergoing a consultation exercise scheduled to end May 2024 .
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