You may remember that The Hot Aisle covered the Elean Data Center in earlier articles about A green Data Center design and Absorption Chillers.

The Elean Data Center, near Cambridge, has won a prestigious award from the United States Government after being recognised by the US Department of Energy and the Uptime Institute as Europe’s leading Energy Efficient Data Center. As a finalist in the United States Department of Energy and Uptime Institute’s prestigious ‘Global Green IT Awards’, held in New York recently, BNB  and 5 NINES’ Data Campus at Cambridge, is leading the UK’s Data Center Energy and Carbon Reduction. With guaranteed energy savings of 40%, the Elean Data Center offers outstanding financial reasons to locate at the Cambridge campus. The development has planning permission, full power, and fiber available. The 65,000m2 development, to be built on the former Mepal airfield site at Sutton, 12 miles north of Cambridge, will deliver reduced running costs using energy-efficient techniques. By locating the data center adjacent to a power station, massive savings can be achieved by using the waste heat from the power station to enable the use of absorption chillers, without requiring electricity.

The Elean Data Campus will cut the amount of energy used from 65MW to 34MW. Recent studies show that Elean would make power savings of 27 per cent, representing a cost reduction of at least £14m ($20.4 m) per annum. In addition, the campus will only use 100% carbon-neutral waste as a power source, reducing its environmental impact and further establishing its sustainability credentials.

Key speakers at the Awards Ceremony included Kathleen Hogan, Director, Climate Protection Partnerships Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, who confirmed that carbon taxing or its equivalent were key priorities for the Obama Administration, and John Lushetsky, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency, Office of Technology Development, Energy Efficiency and Renewable energy at the US Department of Energy, who presented the Awards.

Alex Arthur of BNB said: 

“The Elean Data Campus has been designed in order to meet Climate Change Levy Exemption in the European Union and BNB and 5 NINES are delighted that the US Department of Energy, and the Uptime Institute has recognised the commercial and ethical advantages that Elean delivers. We have a world class Green Data Center at the Elean campus, and the UK leads the world having implemented the Climate Change Levy from which the Elean Data Center is totally exempt. We look forward to the UK government following suit and giving its support to this ground-breaking project.” 

The awards, co-sponsored by McKinsey & Company, recognize organizations that are pioneering energy-efficiency improvements in their data center operations.