New certification for green data centres on the market

The Austrian Ecolabel was created back in 1990 to provide environmentally relevant guidance when purchasing products and services. As Austria’s most important environmental seal of approval, it is awarded for four years by the Federal Minister for Climate Protection following a thorough examination of fulfilment of the criteria. With “Data Centres UZ 80”, it is now also possible for owners and operators of data centres to obtain certification.

As a result of ongoing digitalisation and the advance of artificial intelligence technologies, the volume of data processing in Austria has increased many times over; and it continues to rise, which also increases energy consumption in data centres. If you consider that a larger data centre consumes many times more electrical energy than an office building, you can imagine the future impact on the climate. Energy consumption in the ICT sector already accounts for more of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. There is no doubt that digitalisation is helping to reduce the energy consumption of the business and automation processes supported by data centres and improve their environmental footprint. However, the providers of data centre services themselves must also make a corresponding contribution – and do so in a verifiable manner.

The Austrian Ecolabel can be awarded to climate-friendly data centres,

• whose technical building equipment (TGA) is operated in a particularly energy-efficient and resource-saving manner,
• that develop and successfully implement a long-term strategy to increase energy and resource efficiency for the data centre,
• that enable their customers to implement measures to increase energy efficiency
• and who create the conditions for IT operators to operate information technology in an energy-efficient manner through guaranteed minimum standards and transparent reporting.

CIS is an independent testing centre approved by the Federal Ministry for Climate Protection that can provide the necessary expert opinion for successful certification. Approved CIS auditors for the preparation of “Data centres UZ 80” reports are listed here on the Austrian Ecolabel website.

Harald Erkinger, Managing Director of CIS, explains: “The new UZ 80 certification for data centres is another milestone for a sustainable and secure IT landscape in Austria. It represents the optimal extension of existing assessments in the field of EN 50600 certifications, in which CIS already has many years of experience.”