THE Building and Construction Authority (BCA) and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) will update the Green Mark for data centres on Friday (Oct 18).
On BCA’s website, it states that the updated Green Mark certification, which is currently in a “beta”, or pre-release state, will replace the existing certification from Mar 1, 2025.
The certification awards points based on sustainability criteria in areas such as energy and water efficiency, sustainable construction and management, and indoor environment quality.
As part of the updated standard, the prerequisite requirements for data centres have been tightened.
For new data centres to achieve the Green Mark Gold Plus and Platinum rating, they will have to achieve a maximum power usage effectiveness (PUE) at 25 per cent IT load of 1.46 and 1.39, respectively.
Previously, new data centres only needed to achieve a PUE at 25 per cent IT load of 1.55 and 1.5 to achieve the Gold Plus and Platinum ratings, respectively.
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PUE is a ratio of the total energy used by the data centre to that of IT equipment energy used. A data centre that achieves a lower PUE is more efficient.
Data centres will also be scored on their water efficiency effectiveness (WUE) for the first time since the certification was introduced.
The metric is calculated by dividing the annual water consumption of a data centre over the annual IT energy used. A lower figure shows that a data centre is using water more efficiently.
To score half a point for the category, data centres will have to achieve a WUE of less than or equal to 2.2, while a point is awarded for achieving a WUE of less than or equal to 2. Previously, data centres only needed to provide permanent water meters to monitor and track water consumption to score a point.
Under the new Green Mark certification, data centres will need to score 40 or 50 points out of the maximum 75 points to receive the Gold Plus and Platinum rating, respectively.
The Business Times has reached out to BCA and IMDA for comment on when the new certification will take effect, and whether existing data centres will need to be recertified.
IMDA had previously announced as part of its Green Data Centre Roadmap in May that the certification would be updated by end-2024 to raise the standards for energy efficiency in data centres.
As part of the roadmap, IMDA said that data centres should evaluate and deploy more efficient cooling solutions, given how server rack densities are rising due to the need to process more compute-intensive artificial intelligence workloads.
Solutions such as rear door heat exchangers, direct to chip cooling and immersion cooling were suggested as ways to more effectively remove heat from IT equipment.
BCA and IMDA last refreshed the Green Mark for data centres in 2019 after its launch in 2012.
