Sustainability

Proud to be part of the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact

The CNDCP is a group of Data centre operators and trade associations committed to the European Green Deal, achieving the ambitious greenhouse gas reductions of the climate law, and leveraging technology and digitalisation to achieve the goal of making Europe climate neutral by 2050.

To ensure data centres are an integral part of the sustainable future of Europe, data centre operators and trade associations agree to make data centres climate neutral by 2030.

Reducing Water Consumption

Water Consumption is a great example where a data centre using evaporative cooling could have a significant adverse impact on the local water supply.

By employing innovative thinking the team at Ark has developed a ‘Water Buffering and Saving Mode’ for our cooling equipment which reduces our original peak water usage by a staggering 85%.

Harvesting Rainwater

By capturing water from the roof and also from the ‘run-off’ of the car parks it is possible for our data centre evaporative cooling systems to operate solely on harvested rainwater (with the exception of the first year where we need to do an initial fill of the storage tanks).

Maintaining some of the lowest PUE in the industry

Ark has developed innovative direct air evaporative cooling capability that dramatically lowers energy consumption and cost, capable of providing compressor free cooling for 100% of every year.

Our use of sophisticated technology ensures that the data centre cooling adapts to IT load in real time to reduce wasted energy and to deliver just the right amount of cooling to each rack across its operating spectrum up to 50kW per rack.

Eliminating diesel

We have removed all diesel from our standby generator fuel tanks and replaced with Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO). This will reduce our existing very limited Scope 1 fossil emissions by 90%, our NOx emissions by >15% and our particulate emissions by >25%.

Favouring steel over concrete

We realise that the abundant use of concrete accounts for around 8% of all carbon emissions globally, that’s more than 3 times that of the entire aviation industry.

Our factory focused modular building process not only reduces the construction time on site (along with the health & safety risks of a construction site) but it also favours steel over concrete and allows us to recycle up to 90% of our building fabric in the future; thereby lessening the overall environmental impact of our buildings, when compared to a traditionally constructed building.

Encouraging the use of Electric Vehicles

Each Ark facility has significant provisions to accommodate and encourage the use of electric vehicles including dedicated sections of our car parks equipped with Multiple EV Chargers with provision for up to 20% of car parking spaces in the future.

Introducing living walls

Our Living Walls on urban data centres contain ‘planters’ at each floor level which act as significant flower beds with ample soil and water retention that can be easily maintained, producing a real living garden.

In addition to encouraging biodiversity, the vegetation produces its own ‘microclimate’ absorbing heat when the weather is hot preventing it from getting into the building and acting as an insulator when it is cold.

Leveraging 100% renewable energy

For the last 6 years, all Ark facilities have been powered by 100% renewable energy.

Reducing waste

Ark’s Waste Management Strategy is simply to become a ‘zero waste to landfill business’.

Our aim is to reduce the unnecessary use of raw materials and encourage re-use of materials and products. We reduce waste to landfill through recycling, composting or energy recovery, leading to a lower environmental impact and positive carbon reductions.

In 2020 our waste management system identified that 96% of our waste was recycled with 4% going for energy recovery.

Promoting biodiversity

Biodiversity is an area that is not often synonymous with data centres. However, in a campus setting biodiversity can play a significant part in both the wellbeing of the people working on the campus and contribute to our customers sustainability goals.

The current Ark Data Centre campuses between them have in excess of 5 hectares dedicated conservation areas which include bat corridors and a bat cave, badger sets and hibernacula all designed to encourage the local wildlife to thrive.