Building community trust into data center design

For communities living near a proposed data center, questions about energy, water and noise are frequent. Answering those questions requires more than explaining the importance of digital infrastructure. For data center operators and developers, it means carefully considering community priorities during the design phase while project decisions are still taking shape.

In a recent interview with Data Centre Magazine, Katie McGinty – Vice President and Chief Sustainability and External Relations Officer at Johnson Controls – explored these questions in detail.

In the interview, McGinty discussed how cooling, heat reuse and transparency can balance the local cost and benefits of data centers. She also analyzed where community concerns originate from and what data center operators and developers can do to address them.

This article shares some of the key takeaways from that conversation.

Advances in technology have changed the data center landscape

During the discussion, McGinty highlighted an information gap that currently exists in the data center industry. This is due to an evident lag between the speed at which data center technology is advancing and how new information about these advancements is being communicated to those outside the industry. For this reason, it is important for organizations to inform communities about developments related to energy efficiency, noise control and water usage.

"If there is a gap today, it is often between the pace of innovation and the pace at which information about those innovations reaches communities and becomes visible in local projects,” McGinty said. “Many of the concerns communities raise are based on challenges the industry is actively solving through advances in cooling, energy efficiency, noise reduction and facility design.”

When looking at this information gap, McGinty pointed to advances in cooling, water usage and data center noise mitigation in particular.

“What is often missed is how quickly the equation is changing. Just 18 months ago, a gigawatt-scale data center could represent a small city's worth of water consumption and significant energy demand," McGinty said. “Today, many cooling solutions can deliver the same cooling performance with zero on-site water use, while advances in chip design and thermal management can help cut cooling-related energy consumption in half.”

More efficient cooling, integrated controls and heat recovery can help reduce resource demands and improve energy performance. Added to this, equipment selection and system design can influence acoustic performance and space requirements. This is where technology specifically designed for high-density data centers – such as the York® YDAM or York® YKHT – help operators reduce infrastructure demands in water-constrained environments.

“As compute density increases, cooling density is increasing alongside it, allowing us to support more computing power with substantially less equipment and allowing some thermal architectures to operate with up to 60% fewer dry coolers, reducing equipment and supporting infrastructure requirements,” McGinty said.

These capabilities make early evaluation and community engagement even more important. Data center operators and developers need to consider how a proposed combination of systems will impact the local community and their stated priorities.

Community considerations should start at the design stage

McGinty was quick to point out that many of the decisions that shape a data center's impact on its neighbors – such as cooling architecture, water strategy, equipment placement and noise mitigation – are interconnected. Evaluating these factors together as early as possible in the planning and design stage gives developers more flexibility to reduce impacts while maintaining performance, resilience and room for future growth.

“Community engagement should begin on day one of the planning and design process – well before construction begins,” McGinty said.

Engaging with the community also creates an opportunity to listen, because local priorities vary. By doing their utmost to understand the specific and unique priorities of the local community, project teams can identify which design considerations and performance measures matter most. This is key to effective data center design that builds trust with residents of the surrounding area.

Turning waste heat into a valuable resource

Reducing local impact is only one part of the story. Another key consideration is how the data center can deliver value to the surrounding community.

Heat reuse offers one such example. Data centers produce thermal energy as they operate. In the past, a high proportion of this energy was lost as waste heat. With heat pumps, energy can be put to work beyond the data center facility.

Instead of losing energy as waste heat, facilities can potentially repurpose it so that it becomes a source of clean, affordable energy for local communities. This is a concrete topic for developers to explore with local stakeholders during the planning phase. Waste heat recovery strategies can have the dual effect of providing heat and power to nearby areas while also strengthening relationships.

“Recovered waste heat is a compelling example [of a way in which data centers can deliver community value]," McGinty said. "Data centers operate around the clock, producing a continuous and reliable source of thermal energy. With heat pumps, that energy can serve nearby hospitals, universities, schools and district energy systems.”

When discussing the topic of delivering value to the local community, McGinty also highlighted demand for skilled tradespeople, technicians, manufacturers and suppliers. This is viewed as a crucial part of the economic case for data centers. Building and operating data centers creates huge demand for labor and specialized services, which can potentially open work and career opportunities for individuals and businesses in the local community.

Building trust through measurable results

Technology alone does not establish trust. It’s only earned when locals can see clear evidence that commitments made at the outset are being delivered upon.

“Transparency is equally important [as water and energy usage],” McGinty said. “Communities increasingly want facility-specific information, including how much water and energy a facility uses, rather than relying on industry averages. They also want to understand how efficiently those resources are being used and whether technologies such as heat recovery can create additional value from resources that might otherwise be wasted.”

Communities also benefit from facility-specific information about water and energy consumption. Clear performance metrics provide a basis for comparing early commitments with actual and tracking progress over time. This is crucial for building strong relationships with the local community.

For developers and operators, the task is to connect those outcomes from the outset – listen to local priorities, evaluate design options together and make progress visible over time.