Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority (BCA) and the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) have jointly developed a dedicated green building rating system for data centres.
Grace Fu, Singapore’s Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and Second Minister for Environment and Water Resources and Foreign Affairs launched the GreenMark for Data Centres at the recent International Green Building Conference and BEX Asia.
With Singapore's commercial data centre space projected to increase by 50% from 2010 to 2015, green and sustainable use of energy has come under the spotlight. It is estimated that a typical large data centre in Singapore consumes energy equivalent to 10,000 households. Energy cost for data centres is also currently estimated to make up 50% of operating costs.
In contrast, certified green data centres are estimated to achieve potential energy savings of up to 30%. “Companies are looking to host their strategic IT operations and data centres in Singapore, which offers a secure and resilient infocomm infrastructure, a thriving and vibrant infocomm industry and highly skilled infocomm manpower,” said IDA's CEO, Ronnie Tay. "As the demand for data centre increases, there is a need to ensure the sustainable development of data centres. To this end, the Green Mark for Data Centre scheme aims to encourage better management and improved energy efficiency of data centres in Singapore."
The scheme covers both data centres that may occupy a purpose built data centre building or are part of a larger building. It assesses data centres based on five key criteria -- energy efficiency, water efficiency, sustainable construction and management, indoor environment quality as well as other green features. Based on the combined scoring, the data centres will be awarded Platinum, GoldPlus, Gold or Certified status.
The first three data centres to have been awarded Green Mark ratings are the Credit Suisse regional data centre (Platinum), Equinix’s SG2 data centre (GoldPlus) and the Singapore Tourism Board data centre (Gold).