12th May 2021
The energy consumption associated with data centers and information management has increasingly become a sustainability concern globally as the industry grows at a rapid pace. The world is quickly becoming more dependent on cloud and edge computing every day, placing a responsibility on facility owners to ensure that their data centers are both efficient and resilient.
This understanding among industry professionals has driven the decision behind a recent announcement from Iron Mountain — a storage and information management services company — announcing that it has adopted BREEAM as its global standard for designing, constructing and operating data centers. Through the partnership, Iron Mountain and BREEAM plan to take a leading role in implementing higher industry standards that reduce the carbon footprint of these developments.
By 2025 all new Iron Mountain construction of multi-tenant data center facilities will be BREEAM certified.
Currently, Iron Mountain’s real estate portfolio includes over 85 million square feet and 1,400 facilities across over 50 countries — and these metrics will continue to grow as more organizations rely on cloud and edge computing to support IT infrastructure. BREEAM will add value to this expansive portfolio by providing an assessment method that is designed to empower those who own, develop, deliver, and manage real estate — including data centers — to produce assets that are sustainable, resilient, healthy, and that grow while protecting value for owners and investors.
Ultimately, as corporations and developers work to meet ESG and sustainability commitments, they are increasingly looking toward BREEAM to establish a baseline for the status of current facilities and benchmark goals for current and prospective developments alike — and data centers will be no exception.