Swindon & Wiltshire News
Carbon-Z data centre in Swindon goes fully carbon neutral in major sustainability push
Carbon-Z’s data centre in Swindon has become one of the first in the UK to be fully carbon neutral, following an overhaul of its site and work practices.
This includes the submersion of all hardware components in cooling liquid and sourcing electricity from green energy providers. Plans are also in place for installing solar panels on the site’s roof.
The site at Groundwell Industrial Estate was previously known as SilverEdge and is rebranding itself to reflect the change of direction in how it operates and the services it provides to clients.
It now hopes to inspire a wider shift towards sustainability within the data centre industry, which accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions annually than commercial flights.
Jon Clark, commercial and operations director at Carbon-Z, said: “As the United Kingdom and the world move towards achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, our industry is responsible for making data centres greener and more efficient.
“At Carbon-Z, we continually look for new ways to improve our sustainability with the goal being to get our data centres to carbon neutral, then carbon zero and then carbon negative.
“We believe this is possible and hope to see a wider movement among our peers in the same direction over the coming years.”
The growing intensity of computing power as well as high-performance demands has resulted in rapidly rising temperatures within data centres and a negative cycle of energy usage.
More computing means more power, more power means more heat, more heat demands more cooling, and traditional air-cooling systems consume massive amounts of power which in turns contributes to the heating up of sites.
To get around this, Carbon-Z site operates using liquid immersion cooling, a revolutionary technology which involves the submersion of hardware components in dielectric liquid which does not conduct electricity and conveys heat away from the heat source.
This greatly reduces the need for cooling infrastructure and costs less than traditional air cooling.
The smaller amount of energy that is now needed to power the Swindon site can now be sourced through Carbon-Z’s Green Energy Sourcing.
