Water scarcity and conservationData centers house technologies and equipment that use enormous amounts of energy and generate a lot of heat. To operate, they must be cooled down. That takes a combination of power and water. Depending on the cooling technology, data center operators can adjust use levels of either. Cooling towers that evaporate water have been the traditional cooling method because they use less electricity. Water has long been thought of as free or cheap, especially when compared to electricity. But it isn’t, and a global water issue looms.

The United Nations’ 2019 world water development report shows water scarcity is here, it’s real and it will worsen. Water usage has risen worldwide by about 1% every year since the 1980s, and demand will continue to increase at that rate until 2050 – that equates to an increase of 20% to 30% more than today’s water usage. Additionally, the UN expects water demand to outpace supply by almost 40% as soon as 2030.

Therefore, CyrusOne’s 17 newest data centers are, and future ones will be, Zero Water Consumption Cooling facilities. These facilities do not use water towers and evaporating cooling. While they do use small amounts of water for humidification, facility maintenance and domestic water, this is minor compared with facilities that use water for cooling.

In fact, CyrusOne Zero Water Consumption Cooling facilities use less than one cup of water for every kilowatt hour delivered to servers, saving millions of gallons every month.

Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) – the ratio of water used at the data center to the electricity delivered to the IT hardware – is a common measurement of how efficiently a data center uses water. While some data center operators strive to get a WUE below 0.3, CyrusOne runs 10 data centers with a WUE of 0.1 or less.

The CyrusOne Sustainability JourneyData centers power the modern world. They enable cloud computing, AI, machine learning and many of the technologies that have become part of daily life. But to meet surging demand, data centers require water and electricity in ever-increasing amounts – this is not sustainable.

While CyrusOne is proud to empower clients and consumers in the digital age, it also embraces its responsibility to reduce its environmental impact. To that end, it has adopted a three-pronged sustainability mission: committing to water and energy conservation, building data centers compatible with a sustainable future and being a strategic sustainability partner with clients.

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The CyrusOne Sustainability Journey

Water ConservationData centers usually require water to cool down servers. CyrusOne uses no water (water towers or evaporative cooling) at its newest data centers. This enables the facilities to drastically cut water consumption for cooling:

• The average U.S. data center the size of CyrusOne’s Phoenix – Chandler facility consumes 15 million gallons of water a month. Phoenix – Chandler consumes zero.

• The average U.S. data center the size of CyrusOne’s Northern Virginia – Sterling V (Kincora) facility consumes 9.8 million gallons of water a month. Northern Virginia – Sterling V (Kincora) consumes zero.

• The average U.S. data center the size of CyrusOne’s Chicago – Aurora II facility consumes 2.7 million gallons of water a month. Chicago – Aurora II consumes zero.

• The average U.S. data center the size of CyrusOne’s Dallas – Allen facility consumes more than 1 million gallons of water a month. Dallas – Allen consumes zero.

• The average U.S. data center the size of CyrusOne’s Santa Clara facility consumes 11 million gallons of water a month. Santa Clara consumes zero.

CyrusOne’s water conservation efforts are particularly important where water scarcity is a major issue. For example, the Phoenix – Chandler facility operates in a geographical area that today faces a medium-to-high-risk of water supply disruption. By 2030, the area is projected to be at an extremely high risk. In many areas where CyrusOne data centers operate, including Phoenix – Chandler, water supply will soon decrease and water costs will rise. And from a moral perspective, when people don’t have water for basic needs, CyrusOne believes data centers should not burn millions of gallons of water a month on cooling systems.

With that in mind, CyrusOne examines the water risk in every watershed where it operates a data center to consider present and future risks.It designs all its new facilities to use Zero Water Consumption Cooling. It’s conscious the data centers it builds today will serve customers for decades as sustainability challenges evolve over time. So, it does not lock itself into data center designs and systems that may be ill-suited for future environmental challenges.

Energy efficienciesData centers need large amounts of electric power. Global data centers consumed some 260 terawatt-hours in 2018, representing about 3% of the world’s energy consumption. The U.S. Department of Energy predicts American data centers will consume 78 billion kWh in 2020.

If users kept their own enterprise data centers, which by default are less efficient, energy consumption would be even higher. CyrusOne plays an important role in the co-location space. It helps the companies deliver data services more effectively by providing more efficient data centers that can keep users closer to capacity, as opposed to the typical overbuilt enterprise data center.

There are benefits to energy and water efficiency by transitioning from many small on-site data centers to fewer advanced hyperscale data centers, such as CyrusOne’s Massively Modular® data centers. Combining the needs of lighting, cooling and power conditioning allows for economies of scale and can reduce the electrical consumption needed to keep the servers running at their best. Its data center design includes energy- and cost-saving features, such as high-efficiency Uninterruptible Power Supplies, Power Distribution Units and variable-speed fan drives. Its building management system, sensors and flexible infrastructure allow precise delivery of the right cooling at the right time to the right space. It partners with customers to implement server airflow management strategies and containment. These features give CyrusOne’s new facilities impressive design efficiencies when operating at full utilization without shifting the burden to water resources.

Renewable EnergyEach data center runs on electricity from the local grid, which generates a certain amount of the electricity it provides from renewable sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, hydro and geothermal. The grids where CyrusOne operates have increased their renewable energy usage, reducing their dependence on fossil fuels:

• Phoenix – Chandler’s grid has increased its renewable energy usage from 6.9% in 2004 to 11% in 2016.

• Northern Virginia – Sterling V (Kincora)’s grid has increased its renewable energy usage from 3.7% in 2004 to 5.6% in 2016.

• Chicago – Aurora II’s grid has increased its renewable energy usage from 1.1% in 2004 to 4.2% in 2016.

• Dallas – Allen’s grid has increased its renewable energy usage from 1.3% in 2004 to 14.5% in 2016.

• Santa Clara’s grid has increased its renewable energy usage from 25% in 2004 to 37% in 2016.

Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) – the ratio of overall electricity consumption at the data center facility to the electricity delivered to the IT hardware – is a common measurement of how efficiently a data center uses electricity. Hyperscale data centers, like CyrusOne’s are able to achieve better PUEs than typical enterprise data centers.

CyrusOne also supports renewable energy initiatives. Its new London I and II facilities run entirely on renewable power, and its future London III facility will too. By running on a 100% renewable energy tariff, it will transition annual energy use equivalent to 52,000 households to zero-emissions sources.

Sustainable partnershipsCyrusOne’s customers, particularly cloud companies, have some of the most ambitious sustainability goals of any industry. So, CyrusOne positions itself as a strategic partner for their sustainability goals. This includes giving customers the information they need to make the most informed sustainability choices and helping them achieve their sustain-ability benchmarks. For companies that do not manage their own renewable energy certificates, CyrusOne verifies its power providers can offer renewable energy certificates to pair with customers’ server power demand to help them reach their sustainability targets.

It also provides customers sustainability data for each of its facilities to help with reporting and site selection with a focus on water risk and power grid composition.

For water risk, it examines the risk in the region where the facility operates and the facility’s exposure to water risk based on the amount of water required for operation. This helps customers understand and mitigate risks that all data centers face in that same region, and how CyrusOne manages its risk.

For the power grid, CyrusOne reports trends and values for the carbon intensity of the grid at each location and the amount of renewable power on the gird that powers the facility. This helps customers pick facilities with lower impacts and improve their location-based greenhouse gas reporting.

Social impact Sustainability is about more than water usage and the power grid – it’s about people. CyrusOne is more than just a place to work… it’s a Great Place to Work™. It lives by the Golden Rule of respect for each other and the value each person brings with different opinions and views.

The company puts a priority on employee engagement and culti-vates an environment where each employee feels valued, included and empowered to bring their ideas to company leadership. For this reason, Fortune magazine recognized CyrusOne as a Great Place to Work in 2018.

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The CyrusOne Sustainability Journey

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The CyrusOne Sustainability Journey

In 2017, it completed company-wide diversity and inclusion training as part of its HR Roadshow. Training focused on embracing different cultures, ethnicities and engaging with employees and customers in a way that reflects and respects their unique perspectives and experience. Employees also completed an annual refresher course in 2018.

CyrusOne monitors its diversity and inclusion statistics every month and uses that data when making pay and promotions decisions to ensure it continues to boost representation. It also celebrates many diversity days throughout the year.

CyrusOne employees also give back in the communities where they live and work. The company offers paid time off to volunteer at the organizations of their choice. Organizations CyrusOne employees help include Girls Scouts-USA, March of Dimes and Big Brothers Big Sisters.

CyrusOne believes the best way to show employee appreciation is to ensure they have a healthy and safe working environment. It has designed its safety system in accordance with ISO 45001, the global safety standard. Its injury rates are well below industry standards.

Corporate governanceCyrusOne commits itself to institutional integrity and ethics throughout the organization. All employees, including new hires, participatein annual compliance training that covers conflicts of interest, anti-bribery, corruption, fair dealing, political contributions and activities, antitrust and more.

In addition, seven of its eight directors are independent. Of the seven independents, two are female/minority, including the chairman of the board and audit committee chair. And CyrusOne remains committed to actively seek additional highly qualified women and minority candidates to include in the pool from which board nominees are chosen.

Computing’s future is in the cloud and massive data centers because they provide the greatest efficiencies. CyrusOne employs streamlined engineering elements and methods in its Massively Modular® data centers. However, building and operating data centers leads to a concentration of environmental impacts.

Being a leader in the data center industry means embracing responsibility for reducing those impacts. CyrusOne views its sustainability mission as a long climb up a mountain. It has stablished a strong foundational basecamp, made great strides and the journey will continue.

Greenhouse GasesEach data center runs on electricity generated by the local grid, which emits greenhouses gases at the power plant. Due to improvements in the grid, CyrusOne data centers have become less carbon-intensive over time:

• Phoenix – Chandler’s local grid has cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 17% from 1,254 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour in 2004 to 1,044 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour in 2016.

• Northern Virginia – Sterling V’s (Kincora) local grid has cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 30% from 1,146 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour in 2004 to 805 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour in 2016.

• Chicago – Aurora II’s local grid has cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 20% from 1,556 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour in 2004 to 1,243 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour in 2016.

• Dallas – Allen’s local grid has cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 29% from 1,421 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour in 2004 to 1,009 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour in 2016.

• Santa Clara’s local grid has cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 40% from 879 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour in 2004 to 528 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour in 2016.

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