Dallas (DFW1) —CyrusOne's largest U.S. Data Center in Carrollton, Texas—serves the Dallas, Texas, region with a priority on sustainability. Recent improvements at this site represent CyrusOne's holistic sustainability strategy, which is being implemented across the global network of data center facilities. Over the past years, CyrusOne invested in efficiency upgrades and partnerships at Carrollton that significantly reduced its impact on the regional watershed, energy grid, and carbon emissions.
By its nature, the Carrollton facility requires a large amount of land, energy, and water. Carrollton, like any other building, was built on land that, in the distant past, was natural habitat with native species. Once built, the facility must remain fully operational 24/7 and run IT equipment that draws large amounts of power. Furthermore, these systems generate heat and require energy and water to keep them cool. However, we recognize the impact this facility has on the environment and implemented strategic improvements that have made this facility one of our sustainability “all-stars”.
Since our facilities are deliberately placed to improve data networks, we recognize that the same strategic placement can help provide habitat networks as well. For our Carrollton facility, this meant improving landscaping to incorporate native and climate-adapted species to provide food, water, shelter, and nesting for wildlife. In 2020, we designed the first habitat improvement project for a CyrusOne U.S. facility at our DFW3 facility in nearby Allen, Texas. The lessons learned from designing that habitat were soon put to use 20 miles away at Carrollton when Winter Storm Uri hit Texas, causing irreparable damage to the landscaping. This offered an opportunity to relandscape Carrolton with our native plant list from Allen. Now, Carrolton provides habitat to wildlife in Texas and promotes biodiversity.
Data centers require large amounts of energy to remain fully operational 24/7, run IT equipment, and keep systems cool. These facilities contribute carbon to the atmosphere when the energy supplying them is directly or indirectly based on fossil fuels. With Carrolton being CyrusOne’s largest data center in the U.S., it demands more energy than smaller facilities; however, we have made upgrades to Carrolton to lower its energy needs and contribution of carbon emissions.
To reduce energy consumption, Carrollton replaced traditional compressors with high-efficiency chillers, a cooling system used to remove the heat created by data processing equipment. The facility also underwent LED lighting upgrades, with all 590 LED lighting fixtures now saving a total of 144,715 kWh of energy per year. In 2020, CyrusOne helped develop a renewable solar energy source that will cover a significant portion of our North Texas electricity needs. Together, these strategic upgrades have significantly lowered Carrollton’s energy demand, fossil fuel reliance, and resulting carbon emissions, helping CyrusOne, as a company, make strides toward our goal to be climate neutral by 2030.
Drought is one of the commonly predicted consequences of climate change and is causing increased water stress in areas where we operate, which in turn can create risk for our operations. This may reduce our access to water for cooling or increase friction with local communities. The Carrollton facility is located in an area currently experiencing high water stress and is predicted to continue to face water shortages in the future. To avoid business and community-wide problems with water supply, we invested in water efficiency upgrades and created strategic partnerships, making Carrollton our second net positive water campus.
Our net positive water approach involves both onsite and offsite interventions. First, we looked for onsite opportunities at Carrollton to reduce our water use. While the facility was already partly using air-cooled chillers, its hybrid cooling system also used supplemental water-consuming cooling. This cooling method was converted to 100% water-free cooling at the end of 2019, reducing the annual water use by 65% in 2020. Then, to further reduce our impact and benefit the local habitat, we partnered with Bonneville Environmental Foundation and Trout Unlimited to support water flow management and restore water flows to the Conejos and upper Rio Grande Rivers through the purchase of Water Restoration Certificates® (WRCs). The particular certificates we supported are generated by helping local farmers, agencies, and water managers strategically manage, store, and deliver water to the river throughout the year to keep it from running dry.
While making strides to address the environmental impact of operations at this site, CyrusOne is also preparing the facility for the current and future effects of climate change, including both direct risks to the building and to the resources that it relies on. To better understand Carrollton's physical and business vulnerability to climatic stressors, CyrusOne conducted climate risk assessments, including evaluating future flood risk, water risk, and carbon pricing risk. This information supports CyrusOne’s efforts to reduce its reliance on natural resources, invest in renewable energy, and prepare for facility risks with the goal of establishing sustainable and resilient data centers now and into the future.
At CyrusOne, we both celebrate our strides for the environment at Carrollton and acknowledge that we still have more work to do. We are working toward applying these upgrades at our other facilities and brainstorming more ways that we can be stewards of the environment and the communities that we work in. We want to make sure that our company’s impact is a positive one, in an attempt to not only do “less harm”, but to do “more good.”