An open letter hosted by the iMasons Climate Accord. The Governing Body of the iMasons Climate Accord, a program of Infrastructure Masons, is pleased to release an open letter from our Governing Body and selected members of the iMasons Climate Accord.
The digital infrastructure industry is increasingly recognizing its responsibility to mitigate climate change through lowering the greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of our data centers. Our industry is setting targets and deploying solutions to reduce our footprint. The emissions footprint of digital infrastructure can be viewed in two large groupings: Operational emissions, like those that come from powering data centers, and embodied emissions, capturing the emissions contribution from manufacturing, transporting, and constructing the infrastructure themselves. Both are being addressed by the members of the iMasons Climate Accord (ICA); this letter focuses on accelerating reductions in embodied emissions.
To lower data center embodied emissions, a company must first estimate those emissions, establish a baseline, and then leverage this information as a key criterion in procuring data center materials and equipment. Embodied emissions can be estimated using common lifecycle analysis software. A Lifecycle Analysis (LCA) is a thorough assessment that measures the environmental impact of a product throughout its entire lifecycle. The lifecycle starts with the raw materials in the product (e.g., how they are extracted, transported, and processed), to manufacturing, transportation, product use, and product end-of-life (e.g., landfill, recycling, repurposing, etc.). An LCA calculates the environmental impact of a product throughout its lifecycle – expressed in multiple impact categories. The Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) footprint of a product or material can then be captured in an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) – a standardized, third-party verified document that reports the embodied emissions of the product. One can view the EPD as a “nutrition” label of a material. EPDs are then used to estimate the embodied carbon footprint of a project, in this case a data center, based on the actual volume of material or counts of products purchased.
A challenge facing the data center industry (among other industries) is that there are simply not enough vendors producing EPDs and making them available for data center 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 jeopardize our contracts with some customer groups.
As a result, the ICA members, listed below, would like our vendors to understand that:
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- EPDs are a critical tool in measuring the embodied GHG footprint of digital infrastructure.
- The members of the ICA use EPDs to track the embodied emissions of their data centers to meet regulators’ and customer needs, as well as in the procurement process.
- The digital infrastructure industry needs their vendors to publish more EPDs for materials and equipment used to construct and operate the data center in a climate-aware manner
- EPDs are a critical tool in measuring the embodied GHG footprint of digital infrastructure.
In addition, the ICA members listed below advocate and urge our vendors to:
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- Create Type III, ISO- or EN- verified Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for their products, and ensure those EPDs adhere to common Product Category Rules. Make those EPDs readily available.
- Disseminate those EPDs in common 3rd-party databases like EC3 and OpenLCA
- Align EPD data exchanges with existing standards such as eclass and ISO 22057
- Create Type III, ISO- or EN- verified Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for their products, and ensure those EPDs adhere to common Product Category Rules. Make those EPDs readily available.
By taking these actions, our supply chain vendors will improve the transparency of digital infrastructure embodied emissions, support our GHG estimation and reporting, and help ensure we are positioned to meet our climate goals via more informed green procurement as we develop the digital infrastructure of the future.
– The iMasons Climate Accord Governing Body
