The Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact is a pledge of industry players and trade association of cloud infrastructure services and data centres in Europe to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. It is supported by the European Commission and

Frans Timmermans Frans is an Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish given name, sometimes as a short form of ''François''. One cognate of Frans in English is '' Francis''. Given name * Frans van Aarssens (1572–1641), Dutch diplo ...

, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for the European Green Deal. The

European Green Deal The European Green Deal, approved 2020, is a set of policy initiatives by the European Commission with the overarching aim of making the European Union (EU) climate neutral in 2050. An impact assessed plan will also be presented to increase the ...

expects Europe to be climate neutral by 2050. The Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact pledge addresses 5 areas: Prove energy efficiency with measurable targets; purchase 100% carbon-free energy; water conservation; Reuse, repair and recycle servers; look for ways to recycle heat. Metrics to be achieved by 2025 and 2030 will have to be certified by an independent auditor, except for SMEs. One of the originality of the pledge is that if a data centre operator signatory of the pledge does not meet the expected metrics, the company would be expelled by all trade association signatories of the Pact. A first Board of Directors of the Pact was appointed for a 2 year term 24th February 2021. it is composed by 6 members. First directors are Alban Schmutz ( OVHcloud representing

CISPE CISPE (Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe) is a non-profit trade association for infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud providers in Europe. It was started to aid IaaS providers in explaining their business model to policymakers. ...

and co-founder of the Pact), Michael Winterson (

Equinix Equinix, Inc. is an American multinational company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that specializes in Internet connection and data centers. The company is a leader in global colocation data center market share, with 240 data centers ...

representing EUDCA co-founder of the Pact), Stijn Grove (Dutch Data Centre Association), Emma Fryer (TechUK), Lex Coors ( Interxion) and Fabrizio Garrone (Aruba). The Pact has been referenced by the European Commission as "instrumental in setting up the European Green Digital Coalition"

Engagement of signatories (metrics)

By signing the Pact, Data Centre Operators agree to have all their data centres operated within the European Union fulfilling several metrics. All data centre larger than 50KW of maximum IT power are considered in the perimeter of the Pact to consider. If one of the data centres of an operator fails to meet the thresholds, a 60 days period is granted to propose a remediation plan to the board of directors of the Pact, and this plan must be executed within 6 months. If failing to meet the thresholds, the operator would be expelled from the Pact. Metrics to achieve are the following: * By January 1, 2025 new data centres operating at full capacity in cool climates will meet an annual PUE target of 1.3, and 1.4 for new data centres operating at full capacity in warm climates. Existing data centres will achieve these same targets by January 1, 2030. * Data centre electricity demand will be matched by 75% renewable energy or hourly carbon-free energy by December 31, 2025 and 100% by December 31, 2030. * Data centres will assess for reuse, repair, or recycling 100% of their used server equipment, and operators will increase the quantity of server materials repaired or reused and will create a target percentage for repair and reuse by 2025. * Interconnection with district heat systems to reuse heat of data centres will be envisaged where practical, environmentally sound and cost effective. Some metrics remains undefined like targets on water conservation, but the pledge give the signatories until end 2021 to define and agree a metric with the European Commission.

Signatories

Cloud infrastructure providers and Data centre signatories include: 3DS Outscale (Dassault Systèmes), Altuhost, Aruba,

Atos Atos is a European multinational information technology (IT) service and consulting company headquartered in Bezons, France and offices worldwide. It specialises in hi-tech transactional services, unified communications, cloud, big data a ...

AWS Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide d ...

(Amazon Web Services), CyrusOne, Data4, DigiPlex, Digital Realty & Interxion,

, FlameNetworks,

Gigas Gigas may refer to: * Gigas, one of the Gigantes (Giants) in Greek mythology * Gigas (company), a Spanish cloud services company * ''Codex Gigas'', a medieval manuscript * gigue The gigue (; ) or giga () is a lively baroque dance originating fro ...

, Google, Ikoula, Ilger, Infloclip, Intel Corporation, Irideos, ITnet, LCL, Leaseweb, NTT, OVHcloud, Register, Scaleway, and Seeweb. In addition, the 17 trade associations signed up at the launch are: Association of Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers Europe (

), EUDCA, the European Data Centre Association,

Cloud28+ Cloud28+ is a worldwide cloud computing services marketplace and federation of cloud computing organizations. It was developed and is sponsored by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). In December 2016 it was the world's biggest aggregator of cloud ...

, Cloud Community Poland, Danish Cloud Community, Datacentre Industrien, Data Centre Alliance, Dutch Data Centre Association, Dutch Hosting Providers Association, Eco - Alliance for strengthening digital infrastructures in Germany, EuroCloud Croatia, EuroCloud France, France Datacenter, Host in Scotland, IKT-Norge, ISPConnect, and TechUK. In June 2021, signatories include 54 providers and 23 trade associations, including providers like IBM or T-Systems.

References

External links

* {{Official website, www.climateneutraldatacentre.net Trade associations