Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), the largest global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data center, colocation and interconnection solutions, today announced a new cooling tower initiative at its SIN10 data center that aims to pioneer new levels of water conservation and efficiency in its data centers in Singapore.
This initiative is the first-of-its-kind to be implemented in Singapore’s data center industry. Employing a process known as DCI electrolysis, Digital Realty eliminated the use of chemicals to treat blow-down water discharge – water that is drained from cooling equipment to remove mineral build-up – from the cooling towers in its chiller systems. This allowed Digital Realty to triple the number of times the same pool of water can be used at its SIN10 cooling towers before it is discharged as wastewater, resulting in 1.24 million liters of water saved monthly.
Singapore’s business sector currently uses 55% of the nation’s overall water supply. With this figure projected to increase to 70% by 2060, water sustainability is necessarily a firm focus for Singapore’s data center industry.
Since the implementation of DCI electrolysis in February, Digital Realty has reduced monthly blow-down water discharge at SIN10 by 90%. Water usage efficiency (WUE) at SIN10 has improved by 15%, besting the Singapore Public Utilities Board’s industry benchmark of 2.6 Cu.m/MWh for data centers by 30%.
Beyond water conservation, SIN10’s electricity requirements have come down as a result of minimal mineral build-up in the cooling towers, enabling the overall cooling system to run more effectively. The risk of polluting Singapore’s water systems is also minimized, with cleaner wastewater being discharged from the cooling towers.
Digital Realty seeks to lead the global data center industry in sustainable environmental performance and focuses on a science-based, holistic approach to sustainability, and core to this strategy is improving resource efficiency in areas such as energy, water, waste, and carbon.
This cooling tower project demonstrates Digital Realty’s continued focus on implementing practical, high-impact solutions to contribute to the overall conservation of this vital resource worldwide. Since 2020, the company has reduced its global water intensity by 7%. It joins Digital Realty’s other recently-announced sustainability measures in the Asia Pacific to contribute to the company’s global effort to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 68% and Scope 3 emissions by 24% by 2030, the aggressive science-based carbon emissions targets it set in 2020 with the Science-Based Target initiative (SBTi).
“Digital Realty is committed to minimizing the environmental impact of data centers. This cooling tower initiative showcases how water usage can become far more efficient, and we hope this sets the standard for other data centers to follow,” said Jon Curry, Vice President Operations APAC, Digital Realty.
“The project has yielded very promising results, and we intend to extend this initiative to our other two data centers in Singapore (SIN11 and SIN12) and do our part to optimize resource use in the industry. Sustainability will always be at the core of our business as we continue working toward building and maintaining data centers that maximize our customers’ growth, while minimizing our environmental impact.”
