Digital Realty has reached an agreement with Nalco Water, a water management technologies and expertise firm, to advance Digital Realty’s water strategy and extend the company’s leadership on sustainable environmental performance within the global data center industry.
The program will expand the company’s efforts to optimize water use through reduction, reuse and recycle projects, while ensuring reliable performance and operational resiliency for data center operations around the world.
The agreement with Nalco Water will help implement cooling technologies designed to achieve the best balance between water consumption, energy consumption and environmental impacts. Benefits for Digital Realty and its customers include:
- Enhancing water resiliency and redundancy
- Strengthening water use monitoring and measurement capabilities
- Improving visibility into water using systems
- Reducing water consumption through innovative treatment programs
- Extending asset life
Water stewardship is an important initiative for the data center industry, particularly in areas of water scarcity. Digital Realty seeks to utilize water responsibly while meeting its customers’ needs for reliable and cost-effective cooling solutions. In 2018, Digital Realty’s portfolio of owned and managed data centers used more than 1.4 billion gallons of water, 35 percent of which came from reclaimed, non-potable sources.
Digital Realty recognizes the importance of managing the environmental impacts of its data center portfolio, from design and construction through its operational lifetime. The company sets high standards for sustainability and drives green building design across its portfolio, which has led to the deployment of water-free cooling in many of its properties.
Since 2013, Digital Realty has implemented water-free cooling across more than 344 megawatts of capacity. These cooling systems use pumped refrigerant with economizers to maximize free cooling and deliver high levels of energy efficiency. Compared to cooling tower-based infrastructure, these systems eliminate the need to use water to provide temperature control and are saving approximately 1.03 billion gallons of water per year, enough water to meet the needs of 20,500 households per year.
Most recently, Digital Realty completed the South Bay Water Recycling Application for entitlement of reclaimed water to supply its facilities in Santa Clara, Calif. This application is the first step in transitioning from potable water to reclaimed make-up water and aims to reduce Digital Realty's impact on the Silicon Valley potable watershed by 10 million gallons annually.
“We believe being a responsible corporate citizen entails evaluating the environmental footprint of our data centers and taking the steps to continuously improve,” said Danny Lane, senior vice president, global operations, for Digital Realty. “With this global agreement, we will be able to further improve our water footprint and take immediate actions to expand water conservation, reuse and recycling.”
Due to its global scale and expertise, Nalco Water, an Ecolab company, is positioned to support Digital Realty at existing data centers in addition to future development projects. The agreement includes programs that leverage Nalco Water’s proprietary water conservation technologies, such as 3D TRASAR™ Technology, OSHA safety performance programs, innovative service, delivery and distribution capabilities, digital cloud solutions, and an unparalleled commitment to continuous innovation.
“Digital Realty understands the importance of water stewardship within its growing footprint of data centers,” said Pedro Sancha, senior vice president and general manager of light industries for Nalco Water. “Our expertise will help Digital Realty further optimize its water use and help preserve this vital resource for the benefit of the communities in which it operates.”
