Sustainability – Increasingly Important
The global climate challenge is perhaps the most pressing issue for mankind to address in the coming years, something that has recently been confirmed (again) by the IPCC. The digital infrastructure has a significant and growing footprint of carbon emissions globally, making initiatives and actions to combat this within the industry increasingly important. Perhaps this is the greatest challenge that we have ever faced, however, never before have we been so well equipped to handle it. As technology becomes more present in our daily lives, the importance for digital infrastructure to be environmentally sound becomes ever more vital.
Our Vision: Every Click Improves the Future
- Through our members community, iMasons and our Sustainability Committee support the build-out of a global digital infrastructure that contributes to global GDP and society without harming people or the planet.
Our Mission
- Inspire, encourage, and develop resources to help the digital infrastructure sector reduce its environmental impact
- Increase awareness of the sustainability dimension throughout the industry of digital infrastructure
- Create a demand for new solutions, and then support a positive development through collecting and sharing best practices globally
Our Objectives
- Reduce the overall life-cycle carbon emissions from digital infrastructure
- Establish an industry best practice framework for the design, build and operation of a full life cycle aware sustainable data center to help guide owner/operators, providers, supply chain professionals, and policy makers.
Our Work
In April 2020 the Sustainability Committee published the Circular Economy Whitepaper. This document shows how the Circular Economy concept can be applied by datacenter designers and operators as part of a holistic strategy to reduce their consumption of resources and impact on the earth.
The iMasons Sustainability Committee has developed a Sustainability Data Center Framework which provides an industry best practice for building and running a sustainable data center. The Framework was developed based on input from members and leaders within the iMasons member community.
The Industry Best Practice/Sustainability Framework covers all phases of the life of a DC from planning, to designing, building, operating, and decommissioning the data center. It is also intended to cover all aspects of sustainability including all environmental and social impacts throughout the value chain – a complete life-cycle perspective. The model also indicates at what stage of the sustainable journey is a data center, enabling it to be a helpful road map throughout the journey.
The Sustainability Committee acknowledges that we needed a model that does not have all the answers, but which can be adapted and changed and keeps pushing ever higher performance as our industry continues to develop, and new ideas, innovations, and concepts are introduced.
Feedback on the initial framework and model will be work shopped during iMasons member events throughout 2021.
Download the Sustainability Framework
Sustainability Committee Chairs
Rob Aldrich focuses on ensuring Information Technologies (IT) can achieve the outcomes they promise. As the leader of hundreds of data center, IoT, Big Data and Green IT projects, it has been his job to ensure IT can deliver real solutions to real problems. He brings more than 20 years of experience to the most complex global problems of our times. Rob is the Sustainability Committee Chair.
Lovisa Hagelberg is the Business Director at CBRE. Lovisa is the Sustainability Committee Vice Chair.
How to Participate
All iMasons members are invited to participate in our Committees, Member Resource Groups, and Local Chapters. To get engaged, sign into the iMasons App and select ‘Groups’.