Data centre climate change adaptation
Data centres are crucial to our society, serving as the backbone to a digital economy that continues to accelerate at a remarkable rate.
However, this growth poses significant environmental challenges. At Arup, we believe it is possible to tackle these challenges in unison, responding to rising demand for capacity while reducing environmental impact – and ensuring infrastructure is resilient, reliable and accessible.
We can integrate a range of global solutions specific to your asset, campus or portfolio into our approach. That might mean exploring energy transition approaches or tailoring scalability through upgrading existing facilities; optimising energy efficiency, climate resilience assessments, utilising waste heat or a range of other options.
We can ensure that your expanded infrastructure provides long term economic benefit and maintains the highest levels of productivity, even as it scales. Data from our digital tools will provide transparency in reporting, visualisation of design goals and valuable information on assets’ performance in the real world.
Sustainability
Net zero is a tough but not unrealistic goal for data centres. We can help move your assets towards net zero with our whole-life carbon assessments, decarbonisation pathways, materials selection and advanced cooling techniques. Our approach also includes incorporating circularity, climate resilience and nature-based solutions, all while optimising energy usage and minimising cost.
Finally, our team always adopts a long-term strategy to managing cost, factoring in future needs alongside construction and operational expenses. For existing assets, we prioritise reuse and ongoing operational improvements. For new facilities, we help plan for renewable energy access and optimised layouts to ensure flexibility for future requirements.
With state-of-the-art MEP infrastructure and networking equipment, NTT Communications Hong Kong Financial Data Centre Tower 2 (FDC2) is designed to be compliant with the Uptime Institute’s multi-tier requirements up to Tier IV, the highest rating measuring the quality and reliability designed into a data centre.
As the mechanical, electrical, public health, IT and security engineering consultant, Arup worked with the client to devise a number of innovative solutions to help the premium mission critical facility to meet the reliability challenge and achieve energy efficiency and design flexibility.
Given the high power demand of the data centre, various cooling approaches were employed to improve energy efficiency and save costs for the client. These include front-flow air handling units, indirect free cooling from the cooling towers in winter, and efficient plant design. As a result, the annualized power usage effectiveness (PUE) value can achieve below 1.5 at full load condition, compared with the local average of 2.3.
Insights
Discover how our experts' thinking is shaping our approach to data centre design:
Get in touch with our team
Explore
Learn more about how our services can support your project:
Projects
Explore more data centre projects
European fibre optic networks: buyside due diligence smooths stake acquisition
Telecom buyside Technical Due Diligence, Netherlands
An evolution of Arup-designed LD4 and LD5 facilities in Slough
Equinix, London Data Centre 6, UK
Delivering a BREEAM rated data centre for Amsterdam
AMS15 Data Centre, Netherlands
Designing for the highest standards of reliability and energy-efficiency
NTT Communications Hong Kong Financial Data Center Tower 2 (FDC2), Hong Kong
Data centres
As technology infrastructure, data centres are the backbone of the digital economy, and Arup is driving the development of the most sustainable, scalable and resilient data centres. We offer our clients full engineering, architectural and consultancy services for the entire lifespan of the data centre.