Europe adds new green data centers, New Jersey overbuilds - by doug mohney

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jun 16 2011)

1. 

   Skimming through press releases this week, I came across two new green data center announcements in Europe along with a piece in the Wall Street Journal of overbuilt data center space in New Jersey.  I wonder if this is a cultural/across-the-pond thing or just coincidence.

   Data Center Dynamics reports Equinix is building its third data center in Amsterdam.  This one will follow LEED best practices and use hot and cold storage in ground wells to reduce the need for powered cooling.  Buildings close to the Amsterdam Science Park, where the data center is being build, will be warmed by the data center’s excess heat.

   In phase one, Equinix will offer 6,400 square meters/1,400 cabinet equivalents of customer space, with a phase two build out to double the amount of space.

   Being green in Amsterdam is part cultural imperative and part getting along with the local government.  With the Dutch threatened (yet again) by rising waters, this time associated with global warming, Amsterdam is focused on reducing carbon footprint and being more green.  Data centers are one of the largest consumers of energy in the city according to the Data Center Dynamics piece.  And the Dutch government prefers to deal with large businesses that are playing nice on green issues.

   Next door in Belgium, Interxion has decided to power its data center with 100 percent green energy.  The Belgium site now gets all of its power from renewable sources such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric. Interxion says it has a “duty” to provide leadership in maximizing energy efficiency and sustainability as a pan-European provider of power-intensive data center services. The company participates in the Green Grid Consortium and is also a founding member of the Uptime Institute’s European Chapter and a member of the European Commission's DG Joint Research Committee on Sustainability and its European Data Centre Code of Conduct Metrics Group.

   I have to point out that Interxion has 28 data centers across 11 European countries, so there are still 27 more facilities that could use some greening-up in the power department.

   Meanwhile, there’s a glut of data centers in New Jersey. Developers have overbuilt, according to the Wall Street Journal, with 22 new data centers built in the state since 2005 – doubling the amount of major data center space in the state.  The rapid growth has pushed up the vacancy rate in Northern Jersey up to 14 percent, significantly higher than the 5 percent average vacancy rate for most other major data center markets.

   Data centers in other parts of the United States can cost less to build and offer cheaper power than Northern New Jersey, but proximity to Wall Street and the tens of millions of people in the region tend to balance out some of the attractiveness of being remote. Wall Street especially likes faster, and faster in this case means data centers with short distances to the trading floors of downtown New York.

   The moral of this story? U.S. and European data center builders have different types of efficiency issues that they are currently addressing. The U.S. needs to be more efficient in terms of over-expansion of data center properties and still clearly have quite a ways to go before they get into a mindset as green as Europe.

    

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