TÜV Rheinland SDC
TÜV Rheinland's "Sustainable Data Center" certification is a comprehensive opportunity for companies and the public sector to confirm that their data centers meet high standards in terms of energy efficiency, resource conservation and CO2 emissions.
Datacenters of the Future
Data centers are essential for the digitization of our society. Without high-performance data centers, we cannot achieve the political goals of digitizing the economy, education and public administration. In Germany, data centers are therefore developing more and more dynamically. The increasing demand for computing power in all areas of life and business requires more and more state-of-the-art data centers. Together with the telecommunications networks, these are the backbone of digitization and enable us to fully exploit the opportunities of digitization.
The number of data centers has continuously increased worldwide in recent years. There are currently more than 3,000 large and a total of more than 50,000 data centers in Germany. This is an increase of 30% compared to 2016. Data center capacity will continue to grow in the future and is expected to be over 20% higher in 2025 than in 2021.
In the coalition agreement for the current legislative period, it was stipulated that the potential of digitization must be used for more sustainability. Data centers in Germany should be geared towards ecological sustainability and climate protection, e.g. by using the waste heat. New data centers must be operated in a climate-neutral manner from 2027.
TÜV Rheinland – Sustainable Data Center
The data center industry supports the demand for uniform standards for energy efficiency and sustainability. However, there is currently no suitable basis for this. For this reason, 99% of all data centers in Germany do not have a corresponding certification, since there is currently no modern, targeted certification option that is not aimed at exclusion, but at sustainable optimization.
The rapid development of digitization means that the existing data center infrastructure is already reaching its limits. In order to be able to cover the increased demand, further expansion and increased energy requirements are unavoidable. This increase is to be expected in the future, despite the fact that the number of workloads being installed in data centers has already quintupled since 2010.
Although data centers are energy-intensive, they are also a necessary prerequisite for the achievement of many sustainability goals. The digital applications running in data centers not only enable savings in energy and greenhouse gas emissions in almost all areas of life and work. They also support resource-efficient industrialization, promote innovation and are part of a resilient infrastructure.
Energy Efficient and Climate Friendly
Since data centers are playing an increasingly important role, it is essential that they are built and operated in an energy-efficient and climate-friendly manner. It is important to identify and exploit potential for efficiency; to produce the electricity required for the operation of data centers as climate-friendly as possible. Requirements for the climate-neutral operation of data centers must therefore be specified in a transparent and comprehensible manner - suitable framework conditions are required here. With an efficient, climate-friendly, reliable and high-performance data center infrastructure, the competitiveness of the European and German economy can be strengthened and sustainability and climate protection goals can be achieved at the same time.
Data centers are increasingly perceived in terms of sustainability and environmental friendliness. The sustainability certification "Sustainable Data Center" from TÜV Rheinland, developed by the specialist for climate-neutral data centers High Knowledge from Cologne, is a comprehensive opportunity for companies and the public sector to confirm that their data centers meet high standards in terms of energy efficiency, resource conservation and CO2 -Meet emissions.
The certification is an important milestone for the sustainable development of the data center industry. Because it confirms that companies are meeting the challenges of digital transformation and at the same time dealing responsibly with limited resources. At the same time, the certification takes another step in the direction of sustainability: It encourages other companies to adapt to the same standards and thus also contribute to sustainable development.
