(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Wholesale data center provider Digital Realty Trust (www.digitalrealtytrust.com) has earned “leadership in energy and environmental design for commercial interiors” (or LEED-CI) Gold certification for its 1500 Space Park facility in Santa Clara, California, making it the first building in Santa Clara to earn a LEED Gold certification.
The US Green Building Council’s (www.usgbc.org) LEED building rating system is a nationally accepted, third-party certification program providing benchmarks for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings, focusing on five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality. LEED-CI is the USGBC’s certification program for green interiors.
“The LEED-CI certification for 1500 Space Park recognizes our holistic approach to making efficiency and sustainability key factors in the way we design, build and operate our facilities,” Digital Realty Trust chief technology officer Jim Smith said in a statement. “We use LEED guidelines as a best practice for our entire portfolio of data centers, and we are proud have earned the data center industry’s first ever LEED Gold certification in 2007. We also have 10 additional data center projects currently in the LEED certification process, a sign of our commitment to energy efficiency and environmental sustainability.”
A key element that contributed to this LEED-CI Gold certification was the use of airside economization, which reduces cooling costs by using external air as a complement to internal air cooling technologies, resulting in a power usage effectiveness rating of 1.51 during the commissioning process.
“Northern California has a climate that makes airside economization an important tool for increasing energy efficiency in data centers, making it a natural fit for 1500 Space Park,” Smith said. “In addition to 1500 Space Park, we are utilizing airside economization at one of our other facilities in the area. We plan to continue using it in Silicon Valley and other markets where we can take advantage of the climate to increase efficiency and reduce our customers’ energy costs while supporting their green IT initiatives.”
As well as being the first LEED Gold-certified building in the city, Digital Realty Trust was also able to take full advantage of the Customer Directed Rebate Program supplied by the utility for energy efficiency initiatives, according to Silicon Valley Power (www.siliconvalleypower.com) public benefit program coordinator Mary Medeiros McEnroe. “This is a great model for other buildings because it shows how significant the cost savings can be when a company takes advantage of these programs,” McEnroe said in a statement.
Digital Realty Trust senior vice president Chris Crosby said data center projects often fail to take efficiency from both a financial and an environmental perspective into consideration. “Designing facilities to LEED standards helps companies recognize that the design and construction of a data center is essential to reducing both capital and ongoing operational costs.”
Digital Realty Trust has taken a lead in the industry in a variety of green data center initiatives, having built the first LEED Gold certified data center, and being the first company to report PUE energy efficiency data about its data centers, as well as becoming the first real estate company to contribute as a member of The Green Grid (www.thegreengrid.org).
Financial services company Citi (www.citigroup.com), however, beat Digital Realty Trust to another first in late April, when its 230,000-square-foot Frankfurt data center became the first of its kind in the world to earn the LEED Platinum rating.
