iMasons Climate Accord calls for improved EPD reporting to boost data centre industry sustainability

The governing body of the iMasons Climate Accord (ICA), which is a programme of Infrastructure Masons, has called on the digital infrastructure industry to more widely adopt the publication of environmental product declarations (EPDs) for materials and equipment used to build and operate data centres in a climate-conscious manner.

The ICA governing body is made up of major technology companies Schneider Electric, Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Digital Reality and Meta. Each of these companies have net-zero carbon emissions commitments in place to mitigate data centre carbon emissions, with deadlines ranging from 2025 to 2040.

EPDs are standardised, third-party verified documents that report the embodied emissions of a product. EPDs are then used to estimate the embodied carbon footprint of a project, such as a data centre, based on the actual volume of material or counts of products bought.

This is a crucial aspect of accurately determining Scope 3 emissions, which are not produced by a company itself. Rather, they include the indirect emissions throughout the value chain.

Many hyperscalers have implemented strategies to reduce and mitigate Scope 1 and 2 emissions. However, the next step in achieving carbon emission reduction goals lies in reducing Scope 3 emissions, which can represent anywhere from 38% to 69% of data centres’ total carbon footprint.

The emissions footprint of digital infrastructure is divided into operational emissions, such as those that come from powering data centres, and embodied emissions, capturing the emissions contribution from manufacturing, transporting and constructing the infrastructure themselves.

Operational emissions are relatively easy to calculate, but determining embodied emissions accurately remains a challenge. While EPDs are common in some business sectors, there is limited adoption of EPDs in the data centre industry.

In an open letter published on July 16, the ICA and its members have called for improved EPD reporting, which represents a significant push forward from some of the largest hyperscalers and digital infrastructure companies globally to drive meaningful change across the industry, working in partnership with their trusted suppliers.

“To lower data centre embodied emissions, a company must first estimate those emissions, establish a baseline and then leverage this information as a key criterion in procuring data centre materials and equipment,” ICA executive director Miranda Gardiner explains.

Access to the critical information in EPDs empowers data centre owners, operators and end-users to effectively calculate their environmental impact and choose products such as servers, cooling systems, uninterruptible power supplies and services based on lower Scope 3 emissions, which best align with sustainability targets.

“EPDs are crucial in transforming the future of digital infrastructure to be more resilient and climate positive. The adoption of EPDs within the global supply chain fosters both sustainable and accountable outcomes. As standardised and verified data provides a layer of transparency, this initiative supports a collective approach to reducing our carbon emissions and environmental footprints,” Gardiner explains.

Embodied emissions can be estimated using common lifecycle analysis software, which involves a thorough assessment that measures the environmental impact of a product throughout its entire lifecycle.

The lifecycle starts with the manufacturing raw materials, transportation, product use and product end-of-life. A lifecycle analysis will then seek to calculate the environmental impact of a product throughout its lifecycle, expressed in more than 15 different impact categories, such as eutrophication and acidification.

The greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions footprint of a product or material can then be captured in an EPD.

However, Gardiner says a challenge facing the data centre industry, among other industries, is that there are simply not enough vendors producing EPDs and making them available for data centre owners and operators.

“This hampers the industry’s ability to procure lower-carbon materials and equipment, as well as to reflect vendor emissions reductions in our reporting to key stakeholders, including regulators, which can jeopardise our contracts with some customer groups,” she explains.

She tells Engineering News that one of the primary challenges standing in the way of producing EPDs is the associated cost.

“Concerns include whether there is a return on investment, the time required for production and publication and whether having an EPD influences buying decisions. Companies are unsure if the economic benefits justify the effort and expense involved,” she says.

Schneider Electric sustainability, secure power and data centres head Anna Timme notes that the work already done in developing EPD methodologies by large companies should be built on by smaller companies.

“The last thing we want as sustainability professionals is that companies invest and spend money on devising a different version of a solution for ten different customers.

“That money and effort is much better spent on decarbonising, not building programmes to calculate a carbon footprint in ten different ways for each client,” she says, adding that it is crucial for large ICA members to share what they know about EPD calculations so that the whole industry can benefit.

As such, the ICA has called for wider adoption of EPDs as a critical tool in measuring the embodied GHG footprint of digital infrastructure. These EPDs will be used to track the embodied emissions of their data centres to meet regulators’ and customers' needs, as well as in the procurement process.

She says the ICA and its members urge vendors to create Type III, ISO- or EN-verified EPDs for their products and to ensure those EPDs adhere to common product category rules and be made readily available.

These EPDs should be disseminated in common third-party databases such as EC3 and OpenLCA. Moreover, EPD data exchanges should be aligned with existing standards such as e-class and ISO 22057, Gardiner says.

“By taking these actions, our supply chain vendors will improve the transparency of digital infrastructure embodied emissions, support our GHG estimation and reporting, and ensure we are positioned to meet our climate goals via more informed green procurement as we develop the digital infrastructure of the future,” she says.

"We are committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions across our operations by 2040 by investing in carbon-free energy, scaling solutions and collaborating with partners to broaden our impact.

“We support the ICA’s call for suppliers to adopt the use of EPDs. Doing so will provide greater transparency in Scope 3 emissions embodied in equipment and help accelerate the overall industry's efforts to reduce its carbon footprint,” AWS data centre engineering VP Eric Wilcox says.

Google global data centres VP Joe Kava adds that the call for improved EPS reporting is in line with the company’s commitment to open standards and net-zero emissions aspirations across its entire value chain.

"We support industry-wide adoption of EPDs as a crucial lever in low-carbon procurement of digital infrastructure," he says.

Timme says that, to enable the digital infrastructure industry to align with net-zero emissions goals, carbon emissions must be a fundamental consideration in procurement decisions.

“Promoting industry-wide adoption of EPDs is a critical step in enabling carbon-informed decision making. Schneider Electric has been . . . publishing EPDs since 2008, and we are excited about the significant impact that industry-wide adoption will have as we collectively progress toward net-zero,” she points out.

*Darren Parker was a guest of Schneider Electric at an international ‘Transitioning to AI-ready Data Centres’ media event, in Barcelona, Spain, from July 10 to 12.