Maturity model for sustainability downplays site-level resiliency

Few data center professionals will have missed that the EU is currently introducing several laws that address data center sustainability (see EU data center sustainability laws begin to take shape). The most widely discussed has been the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), which was published in September 2023 and requires data to be reported in May 2024, despite some confusion regarding its reporting deadlines (see Confusion reigns over EED May 15 reporting deadline).

Other regulations have been passed to make it easier for investors and financiers to assess sustainability. The EU Taxonomy has been introduced to steer investments toward sustainable projects, but this requires a definition of what makes a project “sustainable.” For data centers, the initial assessment criterion is a subset of the long-established EU Code of Conduct on Data Centre Energy Efficiency (EUCoC — see Critical role for Europe’s data center code of conduct).