People are becoming increasingly conscious of green initiatives and now consider the environmental impact of new building developments. This is especially important in regards to data centers as they consume 15 times per energy per square foot than a typical office building. According to the International Data Corporation, there are now more than three million data centers worldwide with a single data center at times using more power than a medium-sized town. Most data centers, by design, waste astronomical amounts of energy. McKinsey & Company analyzed energy use by data centers and found that, on average, they were using only 6 percent to 12 percent of the electricity powering their servers to perform computations. The NY Times reported in a 2012 article “Power, Pollution and the Internet” that data centers can waste 90 percent or more of electricity that they pull off the grid. BRUNS-PAK believes that such energy waste can be eliminated by rethinking data center design.
Developed in 1998, LEED is a third-party design certification program that was created to more accurately represent and incorporate emerging green build technologies. Devised by the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) provides a comprehensive system of standards for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance benchmarks.
BRUNS-PAK prides itself on being a member of the LEED program, a recognized standard for measuring building sustainability. BRUNS-PAK understands that sustainability is becoming increasingly important to organizations as part of their corporate initiatives and as part of their efforts to reduce operating costs. Applying a holistic approach, BRUNS-PAK helps clients achieve unparalleled energy savings and decrease air pollutant emissions as part of their comprehensive data center management process. By choosing a LEED certified design, clients can rest assured that their center will never receive an air quality violation or contribute to the extreme data center energy wastefulness.
BRUNS-PAK employs a team of LEED accredited professionals with recognized expertise in building high performing green buildings. Clients find that LEED is an excellent way to demonstrate that their building projects are truly meeting green standards and are built for continuity. LEED operates on the basis of a rating system that gives credits to five major aspects of design for improved environmental and human health, including sustainability, water efficiency, energy and atmospheres, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality. By having your data center be LEED certified, you can prove to staff, clients and the public that your building meets green standards. Carrying this certification also grants eligibility for many state and local government incentives. Another benefit of LEED design is that often it activates money-saving features; thus, most green design investments pay for themselves immediately afterward if not within months after. Life cycle value is always at the forefront of BRUNS-PAK engineers.
When St. Louis based agriculture company Monsanto needed to build a new data center to support the analysis of the data they were collecting from labs, field stations and breeding stations around the world, BRUNS-PAK was selected as their choice contractor. While other data centers are power-hungry and build with little regard to the detrimental effects that such constant energy consumption and waste can have, BRUNS-PAK understood the concerns of an agriculture product company that depends on the stability of the environment for their industry. BRUNS-PAK helped Monsanto assess their existing data center’s processing and capacity needs to determine that building a new center would be more cost-effective, secure and energy-efficient. Their new, 40,000-square-foot building, is 27% more energy efficient than their previous building. The new center relies almost entirely on air flow for cooling as opposed to using conventional cooling units. The state-of-the-art design of the raised floors and walls together enabled consistent, optimized air flow. The center became the third LEED-certified center in the country.
Choose BRUNS-PAK’s end-to-end LEED Design to learn how you too can join an alliance of data centers gathering national attention for their commitment to sustainability.