Digital Edge (Singapore) Holdings Pte. Ltd. (“Digital Edge”) has published the second iteration of its Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) report, reporting for the first time on key metrics to achieve its goal to be a carbon-neutral data centre organisation by 2030. The report also reveals that the company has successfully achieved its target Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) of 1.193 or better at its newly opened NARRA1 facility in Manila.
Digital Edge published its first ESG report in April 2020 which set out a number of ambitious targets aligned to its three key ESG pillars of Respect for Resources, Respect for People & Communities and Respect for Transparency. These included being carbon neutral by 2030 and sourcing 50% of its power from renewable sources by 2025. One year on the company has reported on progress towards achieving these goals, including reporting on its Scope 1 and 2 emissions footprint for the first time and aligning its reporting data to the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) framework for software and IT services.
Most notably the report states that the company’s NARRA1 data centre in Manila, which opened in March 2023, has achieved market-leading power efficiency metrics in its initial Integrated Systems Testing (IST) phase. The company is the first colocation operator to deploy Nortek’s patented Statepoint® Liquid Cooling technology in Asia. This has enabled the NARRA1 facility to achieve a PUE of 1.15 at 75% load during Phase 1 testing under optimized conditions, better than its ambitious design PUE of 1.193 (against a global average of 1.55) and despite the Philippines’ hot and humid climate. This surpasses the company’s Basis of Design target to achieve a peak PUE of 1.3 or less for all new build facilities, with a target annualized PUE of 1.25 or better at 75% load.
Jay Park, Chief Development Officer for Digital Edge commented, “The results we’re seeing in Manila are truly phenomenal, particularly for a data centre in this kind of climate. While it’s still early days and we need to see how the facility performs as we install more customers and increase the load, it is encouraging to see such great performance from day one. I genuinely believe that by continuing to adopt innovative new technologies and processes we will be able to achieve our ambition to build the most efficient and sustainable data centres in the world.”
The theme of the report is ‘Future Possible’ and emphasises the importance of building the digital infrastructure of the future in a way that is both sustainable and responsible. Other key highlights from the report include:
- Digital Edge continues to champion green building standards across its new build facilities, with both NARRA1 in the Philippines and EDGE2 in Indonesia on track to achieve LEED Gold Certification. The company has set a target of ensuring all new builds achieve at least LEED Silver Certification.
- Two facilities across the platform are now sourcing 50% of their power from renewable sources. These are the EDGE1 data centre in Jakarta (operated by EDGE DC) and PEK1 in Beijing (operated by Digital Edge’s partner Chuanjun Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd), powered by geothermal and hydroelectricity respectively.
- In line with the company’s commitment to health and safety, Digital Edge reached more than 2.5 million safe work hours without lost time injury in 2022. The Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) and Lost Time Injury Rate (LTIR) across its construction sites was 0.1 against a construction industry average of 2.5 in 2021.
- In 2022 the company achieved 100% uptime across its operational data centres and all sites are on track to achieve triple certification in ISO 45001 (occupational health and safety), 14001 (environmental management) and ISO 27001 (information security and data privacy) by July 2023.
Commenting on the report, Samuel Lee, Chief Executive Officer at Digital Edge, said, “ESG has been engrained in our company’s values since day one and I am pleased to share the meaningful steps we have taken on the journey so far. We continue to strive to ‘future-proof’ both our infrastructure and our industry; while our company may only be three years old, the investments we are making in ESG ensure we can continue to live up to our values – and meet our customers’ needs – for decades to come”.
