Climate change: More operators prepare to weather the storms

In the 2020 Uptime Institute Intelligence report The gathering storm: Climate change and data center resiliency, the author noted that, “While sustainability… features heavily in the marketing of many operators, the threat of extreme weather to continued operations has received far less attention… some complacency may have set in.”

Events of 2021 have changed that. Fires, floods, big freezes and heat waves — coupled with investor activism and threatened legislation mandating greater resiliency to climate change impacts — have driven up awareness of the risks to critical infrastructure. More data center operators are now carrying out both internal and external assessments of their facilities’ vulnerability to climate change-related events and long-term changes. A growing proportion is now reacting to what they perceive to be a dramatic increase in risk.