Citi said the innovative design of its Frankfurt facility was built with no increased cost over more conventional data centers and without adversely affecting reliability and resilience of the systems it houses.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Following the recent completion of its 230,000-square-foot Frankfurt data center, financial services company Citi (www.citigroup.com) announced that its new facility is the first of its kind in the world to earn the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum rating from the US Green Building Council.
According to Citi’s Thursday announcement, LEED platinum is the highest achievable award for a new category V2.2 construction. The LEED Rating System is a leading-edge system for certifying the world’s greenest buildings, and it is designed to encourage and facilitate the development of more sustainable buildings. According to the USGBC, building operations account for nearly 40 percent of the solution to the global climate change challenge.
Citi said that this award is a world first, as well as a major achievement for the company in terms of its sustainability and energy efficiency. “Citi is committed to ensuring that sustainability lies at the heart of all our major projects and a major new data center was no different,” said Citi’s regional head of realty services, John Killey, in a statement. “For this project, a balanced approach was adopted that recognized Citi’s commitment to a sustainable approach for the building without compromise to its operation and reliability.”
Stephen Ellis, Citi head of technology infrastructure for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said the project’s success was the product of close cooperation between the company’s real estate and technology groups. “The energy-efficient design of the data center, coupled with extensive use of new, energy-efficient virtualized technology, housed in innovative modular cabinets, has optimized energy use and reduced the data cabling needs,” Ellis said in a statement.
Citi’s environmentally friendly building has already been awarded the prestigious “Data Center Excellence Green Energy Efficiency Award 2007” from the European data center industry. It also was also named “overall winner” at the Financial Services Technology Magazine Awards.
With sustainability as a primary consideration during the design, construction and operation phases of the project, Citi said its innovative design was executed with no increased cost over more conventional data centers and without adversely affecting reliability and resilience of the systems it houses.
The Frankfurt data center uses 70 percent less power for data center services than a conventional facility, optimized cooling design results in an enhanced free cooling rate of 63 percent, reverse osmosis water treatment for cooling saves 50 million liters of water per year, and its overall carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by almost 12 thousand tons per year compared with a traditional design.
