Blue Angel for Data Centers and Colocation Data Centers
The importance of colocation data centers has increased significantly in recent years. Colocation data centers already accounted for 32% of the total building area covered by data centers in 2017, while this figure stood at just 15% in 2010. The reasons for this development are, for example, new business processes dealing with digitalisation and the increasing networking of products and the associated increase in the use of cloud applications whose services are primarily offered via colocation data centers. Due to the advance of digitalisation, the number of data centers and, in particular, colocation data centers will grow even further. Both, energy consumption and also the demand for raw materials – and especially critical raw materials – will increase as a result.
The new set of criteria for Colocation Data Centers supports public purchasers in tendering for and procuring environmentally compatible colocation data centers, in a similar approach as what has been done for the criteria for data centers. The "Guide on Green Public Procurement: Products and Services for Data Centres and Server Rooms" published in 2016 provides contracting authorities with support for tendering the procurement of eco-friendly data centre hardware, data centre infrastructure elements, and data centre services. In the interest of simplifying the tendering process, the guide contains separate tenderer questionnaires for each of the following: data centre hardware; measurement equipment installation; energy monitoring; data centre operation. The guide can also be used for tenders concerning the construction of new data centres, or retrofitting of existing ones.
