Sustainability is no longer a corporate compliance mandate; it is a competitive advantage that improves operational performance. Several enterprises on their sustainability journey struggle to make their IT infrastructure, particularly data centers, more sustainable. Data centers power modern economies but consume large energy and resource quantities, leaving significant environmental footprint. Rising data volumes, AI adoption, the expected gen AI boom, carbon neutrality commitments, and climate change are driving data centers toward sustainability.

What makes data centers sustainable? This Viewpoint answers this question by identifying a sustainable data center’s six key characteristics. These characteristics are energy efficiency, renewable energy use, advanced cooling systems, effective waste management, reduced embodied carbon, and emerging technologies across data center operations.

In this Viewpoint, we explore a sustainable data center’s key characteristics and notable investments by data center operators and hyperscalers. The report highlights implications for enterprises aiming to enhance their data centers’ sustainability and improve their corporate sustainability performance.

Scope

All industries and geographies

Contents

In this report, we:

• Examine a sustainable data center’s key characteristics
• Identify market trends shaping the sustainable data center market
• Analyze implications for enterprises working to improve their sustainability performance

Membership(s)

Sustainability Technology and Services

Cloud and Infrastructure Services

Sourcing and Vendor Management