Data Centers and Energy: Reaching Sustainability
Danfoss
A Danfoss white paper framing data-centre sustainability around energy intensity, cost and above all reuse of excess heat; it is market and policy context rather than an engineering guide.
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Overview
The paper reviews data-centre energy demand and emissions estimates, the efficiency metrics PUE, CUE and WUE, regulatory drivers in the EU and Germany, and the financial cost of inefficiency. WUE is illustrated with an example of 1.8 L per kWh. It is a context document, not an engineering guide.
Scale comparisons build its core argument: data centres use 10-50 times more energy per floor area than typical commercial buildings, with the cited intensity about 1,000 kWh/m2 for data centres against about 125 kWh/m2 for a typical European residential building. EU data centres used an estimated 45-65 TWh in 2022, or 1.8-2.6% of regional electricity use.
On cost, electricity is cited as 60-70% of data-centre operating cost depending on regional power prices. On regulation, Germany obliges data centres above 300 kW to use waste heat from 1 January 2024.
The proposed answer is to integrate data-centre heat into community district-energy systems through heat-recovery stations and heat pumps. The paper advocates this direction; engineering details such as heat temperature and heat-pump lift are outside its scope.
Key points
- Data centres use 10-50 times more energy per floor area than typical commercial buildings.
- EU data centres used an estimated 45-65 TWh in 2022, 1.8-2.6% of regional electricity use.
- Intensity comparison: about 1,000 kWh/m2 for data centres versus about 125 kWh/m2 for a typical European residential building.
- PUE, CUE and WUE are defined, with an example WUE of 1.8 L per kWh.
- Germany obliges data centres above 300 kW to use waste heat from 1 January 2024.
- Electricity is cited as 60-70% of data-centre operating cost depending on regional power prices.
Using it in design
- Report PUE, WUE and CUE together in the sustainability module.
- Add a heat-reuse section covering recoverable heat in kW, its temperature and heat-pump lift.
- Add a jurisdiction rule that flags projects above a configurable IT-load threshold (e.g. 300 kW in Germany) as subject to waste-heat reuse obligations.
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Who should read it
Decision makers and designers building a data-centre strategy around sustainability regulation and heat recovery.
Related standards
- ISO/IEC 30134-2
- ISO/IEC 30134-9
- EU Energy Efficiency Directive (EU) 2023/1791
Publication details
- Authors
- Danfoss
- Publisher
- Danfoss
- Year
- 2024
- Document number
- BE491240305282en-010101
- Document language
- English
- Source type
- Manufacturer
- Access
- Free to read
- Licence
- Copyright retained; citation only — the publisher’s terms apply to the original document
Citation
Danfoss (2024). Data Centers and Energy: Reaching Sustainability. Danfoss. BE491240305282en-010101. https://assets.danfoss.com/documents/latest/401074/BE491240305282en-010101.pdf
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Related sources
All sources on this topic
European Commission JRC 2025
2025 Best Practice Guidelines for the EU Code of Conduct on Data Centre Energy Efficiency (JRC141521, EUR 40267)
Design the facility to operate within the ASHRAE Class A2 allowable range and require A2 operation within warranty in IT procurement; plan separate environmental zones (practice 5.3.4) for legacy equipment.
- IT equipment AC/DC power converters should be rated at 90% efficiency or better across expected load ranges.
Open Compute Project Foundation 2025
Reference Designs for Data Center Heat Reuse, Revision 1.0
Provide a heat-recovery-station block in the site layout with space sized from capacity (plate HX footprint, 10 m2 per MW for heat pumps, about 43 m3 per MW per 30 minutes of storage) and a demarcation boundary to the heat host.
- ORC heat-to-power converts less than 4% of the heat to electricity at these low temperatures.
European Commission, DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) 2020
Energy-efficient Cloud Computing Technologies and Policies for an Eco-friendly Cloud Market: Final Study Report (SMART 2018/0028)
Use the regional and size-based values for first-pass PUE assumptions, but treat them as 2018-and-earlier averages and as historical context, not as a current target.
- German PUE in 2015: 2.1 for server rooms under 100 m2, 1.9 for 100-500 m2, 1.7 for 500-5,000 m2, 1.6 above 5,000 m2.
European Commission JRC 2020
Development of the EU Green Public Procurement (GPP) Criteria for Data Centres, Server Rooms and Cloud Services - Final Technical Report (JRC118558, EUR 30251 EN, 2020)
Ask in the specification for a designed PUE (dPUE) at a stated IT load (for example 50%) and conditions, under ISO/IEC 30134-2 or EN 50600-4-2, and write PUE demonstration at handover and the commissioning test into the contract.
- ASHRAE liquid cooling classes cited: W1 2-17 °C, W2 2-27 °C, W3 2-32 °C, W4 2-45 °C, W5 above 45 °C.
U.S. EPA / ENERGY STAR 2007
Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency, Public Law 109-431 (August 2, 2007)
Use it for historical context on PUE: knowing that 2.0 was the 2007 average starting point, compare your current target PUE values against that reference.
- Data center peak grid load was about 7 GW (about 15 baseload power plants), expected to reach 12 GW by 2011.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2024
2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report (LBNL-2001637, December 2024)
Take AI rack and node power assumptions (3.4 to 12.2 kW per 8-GPU server, 20% idle) as a cross-check on IT load models, not as a substitute for vendor data.
- U.S. data centers used about 76 TWh (1.9% of U.S. electricity) in 2018 and 176 TWh (4.4%) in 2023.