GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard ICT Sector Guidance. Chapter 8: 8 Guide for assessing GHG emissions of Data Centers

Transcription

1 GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard ICT Sector Guidance Chapter : Guide for assessing GHG emissions of Data Centers DRAFT March 0

2 Table of Contents GHG Protocol ICT Sector Guidance Chapter : Data Centers Guide for assessing GHG emissions of Data Centers.... Introduction..... Definitions & Assumptions..... Key Principles.... Operational Boundaries.... Emission Sources.... Calculating Life Cycle Impacts..... Production (Preparation for Data Center Use) Stage:..... IT Equipment Deployment & Site Preparation (Pre-Production) Stage:..... Calculating Use (Operations) Stage Emissions..... End of Life (Demolition) Stage.... Case Studies... page

3 [This is a chapter of the GHG Protocol Product Standard ICT Sector Guidance. It is being issued as a draft for public comment, through the GHG Protocol ICT Stakeholder Advisory Group. This is a DRAFT chapter and is still subject to further review and changes. All chapters have been drafted separately by Technical Working Group members, and then reviewed by the TWG and the Steering Committee; however they have not yet been fully reviewed and edited by the convening secretariat. In particular, consolidation and rationalisation with other chapters of the ICT Sector Guidance is still to be reviewed and completed. Use of terminology and methodology also still needs to be reviewed for conformance with the Product Standard. The ICT Sector Guidance consists of the following chapters: Introduction; Telecommunications Network Services; Desktop Managed Services; Transport Substitution; Cloud and Data Center Services. Plus technical support chapters covering: Hardware; Software; Data Centers. The Introduction Chapter includes general principles applicable to the GHG assessment of ICT products and a summary of common methods to be used, which all the chapters can refer to. Further details of the ICT Sector Guidance initiative are available at the GHG Protocol website: Sections (such as this) in italics and square brackets are for explanation of the draft and will be removed for the final version of the document.] page

4 Introduction Data centers are the physical locations dedicated to hosting ICT infrastructure. Their increasing use has resulted in a growing environmental footprint from related electricity consumption, as well as use of fuel, water, refrigerants and other sustainability impacts. This chapter outlines assumptions and best practice approaches to assessing the GHG emissions of data centers from a life cycle perspective. Specifically, this section covers: Definition of a data center s operational boundaries. Calculation of life cycle impacts. Sources of data and data quality. Calculation of data center emissions in accordance with guidance set out in this chapter will allow data center GHG emissions to be fully incorporated into the calculation of the GHG footprint of ICT services. The uses of the hosted infrastructure vary greatly, and such usage is not described or treated in the scope of this chapter and is instead discussed in the service chapters. This section does not cover: Allocating IT equipment to an ICT service; this is covered in Cloud and Data Center Service Chapter. Assessing the life cycle impacts of IT equipment; this is covered in the Hardware Chapter. Allocating emissions between parties that own, or lease data center services. This is an important topic, which is covered in an Addendum on <Corporate Reporting of Data Center GHG Emissions>. This Addendum forms part of the ICT Sector Guidance, but provides guidance on the application to data centers of the GHG Protocol Corporate Reporting Standard (as opposed to the Product Standard)... Definitions & Assumptions A data center is a physical location dedicated to hosting ICT infrastructure: A data center may be a location in a mixed-use facility or a dedicated location. Data centers may be of varying tiers or form factors; i.e. providing different levels of security, redundancy etc. Data centers may host ICT infrastructure for internal use or services for external customers, with a diverse set of business applications or usage at any physical location. Data centers may be used for testing or production use of applications, services, platforms or clouds. Data centers may vary in size in terms of total useable capacity for ICT equipment. This chapter is agnostic to the actual business use of the ICT infrastructure installed at the Data Center... Key Principles The Two key principles of this chapter are: Accounting for GHG emissions from data center facilities infrastructure (such as mechanical, electrical and other equipment installed at the site) and utility feeds to a data center site is straightforward and analogous to reporting for commercial buildings. Efficiency metrics documented by The Green Grid are recommended in calculation methodologies presented. page

5 0. Operational Boundaries The operational boundary of a data center, shown in Figure, is defined as: Onsite power generation and distribution activities. Power delivery system: Uninterruptible Power Supply systems (UPS), switch gear, generators, Power Distribution Unit (PDUs), batteries. Cooling system: chillers, computer room air conditioning units (CRACs), direct expansion air handler (DX) units, pumps, and cooling towers. Other miscellaneous component loads such as data center lighting. The building itself (construction, maintenance, demolition). Onsite ancillary facilities (e.g. offices, exterior lighting). IT equipment: servers, storage, network equipment (e.g. switches and routers). Supplemental IT equipment: KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switches, monitors, and workstations/laptops. Off-site power generation and distribution is calculated is accounted for using grid emission factors, as described in the Introduction Chapter. While IT equipment (items & ) are within the operational boundary of a data center, guidance on calculating life cycle emissions associated with this equipment is provided in the Hardware Chapter. In accordance with the Product Standard, the following activity is considered to be outside of the operational boundary of the data center: Impacts caused by employee related activities off-site (commuting, remote offices etc.) * See Hardware Chapter for guidance on life cycle assessment of IT Devices and the Cloud and Data Center Service Chapter for guidance on allocation of IT equipment to services Figure : Data Center Operational Boundary page

6 . Emission Sources Emission sources at data centers typically include: Electricity consumption. Onsite combustion (e.g. natural gas, diesel, oil boilers/generators etc.). Refrigerant use. Material use (embodied emissions). Standard GHG calculation methods and emission factors provided in the Corporate Standard and the Product Standard should be used to calculate GHG emissions arising from these sources. This is covered further in the Introduction Chapter. The majority of emissions arise during the use stage of data centers, with the contribution of non-use stages often being de minimus.. Calculating Life Cycle Impacts The life cycle for a data center is similar to that of any commercial or industrial building. Figure illustrates the general life cycle stages that should be considered in assessing the life cycle impacts of a data center. Nature Raw Materials Acquisition & Site Selection Design/Build Datacentre Construction IT Equipment Deployment & Site Prep Pre-Production Phase Refresh Cycles Site Operations Datacenter Use Phase 0 0 Demolition - Retire Figure : Stages of a data center life cycle.. Production (Preparation for Data Center Use) Stage: In accordance with the Product Standard, emissions that should be attributed to the production life cycle stage of a data center are those associated with: Emissions associated with the Extraction of raw materials, processing, manufacture and transportation of materials used to construct the data center, as defined by its Operational Boundary. Fuel/ energy used during the construction process. To calculate these emissions, a Bill of Materials (BOM), together with locations of raw materials and manufacturing processes used is required. An inventory of fuel and energy used during construction is also required. The BOM for new build data centers is generally available in data center design and construction documentation; however, this documentation can be difficult to obtain for existing data centers that may be older buildings, acquired after construction, or leased. Fuel/ energy used during the construction process should be available from the construction contractor. page

7 0 0 0 Should these data sources not be available, assumptions may be used to estimate the BOM based on: Size of data center - floor area in square feet (SqFT) or square metre). Tier. Location. There is considerable complexity in accurately calculating the embodied emissions in the BOM used in the construction of a data center. Obtaining emissions data from suppliers can be time consuming, with risk of significant margins for error. It is therefore recommended that secondary data available from credible academic and industry studies and data bases (such as EcoInvent, GaBI and SimaPro) be used to estimate the embodied emissions. This will determine the significance of these emissions in the context of the overall life cycle of the data center, and will determine which materials warrant further primary data gathering from suppliers. In this way, time and effort can be prioritized towards accurately investigating the most material sources of emissions. Any assumptions and secondary data sources should be tracked and disclosed as part of the inventory... IT Equipment Deployment & Site Preparation (Pre-Production) Stage: The approach outlined in Section.. Production (Preparation for Data Center Use) Stage, should also be applied to pre-production fit-out stages of construction. This stage includes preparation of the data center rooms for arrival of IT equipment, including installation of cable trays, racks, power whips, and other supporting infrastructure. Pre-production stage emissions will arise throughout the data center life cycle as it goes through refreshcycles. Data on BOM for these refresh cycles is normally available via procurement systems... Calculating Use (Operations) Stage Emissions Energy used in a data center comprises two components (both of which have to be accounted for in the overall GHG assessment of a data center): Energy used directly by the ICT equipment. Energy overhead for environmental control and other site-wide systems. The energy overhead (or non-it energy) includes the energy used by cooling systems, and also power delivery components such as UPS, switch gear, generators and batteries. The Power Use Effectiveness ratio (PUE) is a useful metric for data centers. PUE was developed as a key data center efficiency metric by The Green Grid consortium; further information on PUE can be found at their website (In particular see the white paper at Grid-Data-Center-Power-Efficiency-Metrics-PUE-and-DCiE ) In order to calculate PUE, metered energy consumption at the data center is required. Figure illustrates typical metering points within a data center. PUE is defined by the following formula: PUE = Total Facility Power / IT Equipment Power (or PUE = M / M in Figure below) Once the PUE factor has been calculated, then it is possible to calculate the energy overhead (or energy usage by the site facilities) from the energy used by the IT equipment. This is useful when assessing a subset of a data center, or when assessing individual services running in a data center. page

8 Figure : Data Center Energy Metering Locations Any refrigerants with global warming potential used at the data center during operations should also be tracked and accounted for. An inventory of refrigerants purchased and used should be maintained at the data center and emissions calculated from these. (See the Introduction Chapter for further guidance on the assessment of emissions associated with refrigerants)... End of Life (Demolition) Stage The disposal and/or re-use of materials following demolition of data centers should be inventoried and tracked so that emissions can be calculated. For similar reasons outlined in section.. Production Stage, it is recommended that secondary data available from credible academic and industry studies and data bases (such as EcoInvent, GaBI and SimaPro) be used to perform these calculations.. Case Studies [The intention is to add a case study to illustrate the relative significance of each different life cycle stage] page