Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 53 (2022) 102769

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Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/seta

Original article

Do ‘green’ data centres really have zero CO2 emissions?

Fu Wang a, Victor Nian b, *, Pietro E. Campana c, Jakub Jurasz c, d, Hailong Li c, *, Li Chen e,
Wen-Quan Tao e, Jinyue Yan c
a
Faculty of Maritime and Transportation, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China
b
Centre for Strategic Energy and Resources, Singapore
c
School of Business, Society & Engineering, Mälardalen University, Vasteras, Sweden
d
Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland
e
Key Laboratory of Thermo-Fluid Science and Engineering of MOE, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The claim of a green data centre is generally made based on a net-zero CO2 emission through a ‘balance-sheet’
Hourly carbon intensity approach, which considers renewable electricity through on-site installation or purchase agreement as abatement
Dynamic energy mix measures against the use of fossil electricity from the electric grid on an annual basis. However, when the hourly
Zero CO2 emission
dynamic fuel mix is accounted for in the assessment, the annual net-zero energy approach does not lead to a true
Green data centre
carbon neutral data centre. In response, two approaches based on net-zero energy and net-zero CO2 emission
respectively are proposed and investigated regarding the goal of net-zero CO2 emission. A data centre in
Singapore with typical load profiles is used as a case study, different scenarios considering climate change and
projected future energy are defined to examine the impacts of dynamic energy mix on the net CO2 emission of the
data centre. The net-zero energy approach is found to result in significant amount of annual CO2 emissions. In
comparison, the net-zero CO2 emission approach can assure a true net-zero CO2 emission, but this approach will
require an increase of PV capacity by 20% and 60% as compared to the net-zero energy approach based on
assessment for the year 2030 and 2050, respectively.

Introduction
The past decade saw an exploding increase in the demand for cloud
computing and internet services. The drastic increase in such demand
has led to a fast-rising number of data centres around the world. In turn,
the rapid increase in data centres has led to an exponentially rising
energy consumption [6]. Data centres are thought to consume an
approximately 200 TWh of electricity annually, which is about 1 % of
global electricity consumption in 2018 [24]. Google alone consumed 5.7
TWh of electricity across all of their operations in 2015 Alphabet’s [1],
which was comparable to the total electricity consumption of San
Francisco in the same year [8]. Under the current projection, electricity
demand of data centres is likely to reach 3000 TWh by 2030, accounting
for more than 20 % of the global total electricity use [2]. In a fossil-
dominated world, electricity consumed by data centre can result in a
significant amount of CO2 emissions.
The CO2 emissions due to data centre operations are mainly caused
by the use of fossil fuels in the electricity sector. In 2014, the estimated
amount of CO2 emissions from data centres was 200 million tonnes,
which was more than 2 % of global total CO2 emissions [30]. By 2040,
CO2 emissions due to data centre operation are predicted to exceed 14 %
of the global CO2 emissions in 2016 [4]. Unchecked growth of energy
demand by data centre could jeopardize the global decarbonization
efforts.
One of the most effective and direct approaches in reducing CO2
emissions is to decarbonize the electricity sector through the use of
renewable and nuclear power technologies. It is estimated that using
renewable energy such as biomass, solar energy, wind energy and
geothermal energy directly to produce clean electricity can reduce
global carbon emissions by about 70 % [10,49]. With the rapid falling
cost of wind and solar electricity since 2010 [33], some parts of the
world might even find renewable energy becoming economically
competitive against all other sources of energy [31]. The falling
renewable electricity price has led to a growing number of data centres
and other internet service companies exploiting on the concept of “green
data centre” through the “use” of renewables under their investments
[53,44], and/or to build data centres in regions with a high proportion
of renewable energy [12].
The green data centre concept is built on the assumption that a major

* Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: victor.nian@yahoo.com (V. Nian), hailong.li@mdu.se (H. Li).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seta.2022.102769
Received 13 May 2022; Received in revised form 14 September 2022; Accepted 14 September 2022
Available online 22 September 2022
2213-1388/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
F. Wang et al.
Nomenclature
Cgen Electricity grid carbon intensity
Egen CO2 emission by fuel type
EM CO2 emission by data centre
IL Photo-current
I0 Saturation current
Pgen Total fuel generation capacity
P Power
V Voltage
Subscripts
cs Cooling system
DC Data centre
es Electrical system
proportion (ideally all) of electricity consumed by the data centre is
produced from low carbon energy sources, such as renewables and nu­
clear [3]. Except the claimed use of clean electricity, all other aspects of
a green data centre are the same as a “non-green” data centre. In 2011,
Facebook pledged a 100 % renewable energy target for its data centres,
which is followed by Google and Apple in 2012 [24]. As of 2017, about
20 internet companies made the same 100 % renewable pledge.
Several approaches can be used to achieve the claimed 100 %
renewable energy target. The most prominent two approaches include
on-site installation of renewable (mostly PV) systems and investment in
renewable energy systems along the concept of Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM) [13,41,19]. On-site renewable installation is
considered the most credible and verifiable approach in achieving 100 %
renewable consumption, and thus net-zero CO2 emission. However, the
uncertain variability of renewables combined with the absence of wide
adoption of energy storage systems often leads to mismatch between the
timing of supply and demand.
Due to practical constraints, most of the reported green data centres
have adopted the “offset” or “equivalent reduction” approach rather
than through the direct use of renewable energy. The Clean Develop­
ment Mechanism (CDM) is built on the basis of “accounting” in which
the renewable electricity company supplies the specified amount of
electricity to the grid for the green data centre over a prescribed
contractual period. In this approach, the grid is responsible for man­
aging excess or insufficient renewable energy generation to ensure suf­
ficient power supply to the data centre. As such, mismatch between the
data centre’s power demand and renewable energy supply can occur,
especially when observed at the hourly electricity generation and con­
sumption level. On one hand, the grid emission intensity between the
grid in which the data centre operates and that in which the renewables
are deployed could be very different. As such, the emission savings from
the renewable electricity might not always be the same as the emissions
caused by data centre’s electricity consumption. On the other hand,
there might simply be insufficient renewable electricity if all green data
centres around the world adopt the same approach in claiming “zero
emission”.
In the literature, majority of the use case scenario in carbon ac­
counting has been applied to residential, commercial, industrial and the
power sectors [52,15]. The current practice for emission accounting
from purchased electricity, such as the GHG protocol, generally adopts
the annual average grid emission factors. Studies, such as [18], have
shown that using an annual carbon accounting approach can lead to
erroneous results due to the inaccuracy in accounting for the dynamic
variability of the hourly grid emission factor. However, a time-
dependent assessment approach, coupled with an accounting of
renewable-grid interaction, has not been adopted to accurately account
for the CO2 emissions at an hourly granularity.
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Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 53 (2022) 102769
i,g Electricity output by fuel type
OC Open circuit
RE Renewable energy
SC Short circuit
Abbreviations
AHU Air handling unit
CCGT Combined cycle gas turbine
CDM Clean development mechanism
EER Energy efficiency ratio
EMA Energy market authority
IT Information technology
MPPT Maximum power point tracker
PUE Power usage effectiveness
OEMI On-site energy matching index
In response, two accounting approaches based on net-zero energy
and net-zero CO2 emission respectively are proposed and evaluated in
this study to estimate the capacity of the on-site or near-site renewable
energy system. The net-zero energy approach is consistent with the
traditional thinking that the total electricity usage by the data centre is
the same as the total electricity production by the renewable energy
system over a prescribed period of time [19,29]. The net-zero CO2
emission approach is defined as zero net CO2 emission on an hourly
basis.
In addition to contributing to the broader debate on the topic of
“green data centre”, this study has addition contributions as follows.
First, the methods proposed in this study are based on dynamic hourly
fuel mix and hence hourly carbon intensity, which, thereby, enhances
the granularity of carbon emission accounting. Next, the methods
further incorporate the physical impacts of climate change on PV elec­
tricity production, cooling load, and cooling equipment performance. To
the best of our knowledge, very few studies in the literature consider
such climate change impacts. Last, different data centre load profiles are
considered to observe how the change in load profiles can impact the
‘greenness’ of the data centre. The proposed approaches for assessing
CO2 emissions can be adopted to any data centre. To demonstrate the
advantages of the proposed approach, a fictitious data centre located in
Singapore is chosen as a case study due to the availability of data.
The rest of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2 presents the
methodology and data of the case study. Section 3 introduces design of
the green data centres. Section 4 presents the CO2 emission calculation
results based on the two proposed approaches. Section 5 and Section 6
discuss and conclude the paper with policy recommendations.
Case study
A data centre in Singapore is proposed as a case study to demonstrate
the advantages of the proposed developments taking into consideration
the dynamic local carbon intensity of grid electricity on an hourly basis.
Singapore is highly urbanised city with complete dependency on fossil
energy imports [38]. In recent years, Singapore has been seeking to
promote the share of renewable energy [46], but situated in the tropical
environment and constrained by landscape. The major proportion of
Singapore’s electricity is still supplied by natural gas using combined
cycle gas turbine technologies [39] with significant challenges in scaling
up renewable or nuclear energy systems albeit the possibility of offshore
wind energy as a long-term option [40,50]. All of these constraints make
Singapore a reasonably challenging case for achieving the claimed
“green data centre”.
F. Wang et al. Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 53 (2022) 102769

Singapore’s electricity system

Singapore has an installed electricity generation capacity of 13667
MW and an average demand of 6018.24 MW in 2019 [16]. A major
proportion of Singapore’s grid electricity is supplied by fossil fuels. More
than 95 % of Singapore’s electricity is generated using natural gas via
combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) and steam turbine in 2019 [17,16].
The remaining electricity is supplied by petroleum products, coal and
others (including renewables and waste incineration). According to the
public statistics data, the registered generation capacity of solar PV and
Waste-To-Energy are 174.3 MW and 256.8 MW, respectively.
Although nuclear power technology has become safer post-
Fukushima, Singapore is unlikely to adopt nuclear energy in the near
future due to political considerations [37] although small modular re­
actors might suggest a potential long-term option [55]. Thus, solar en­
ergy and biomass would likely become the only near-term options for
Singapore to decarbonise the electricity sector. Due to limitations in
domestic supply and uncertainties in a regional supply chain, a large-
scale deployment of biomass for power generation is also unlikely in
Singapore. As such, solar PV might likely be the only strong option to
decarbonise Singapore’s electricity sector. In projecting future fuel mix
for electricity generation solar PV is considered as the only main zero
carbon electricity option in 2030 and 2050. The solar PV deployment
roadmap is shown in Table 1 [23]. Meanwhile, the planned generation
capacity fuelled by natural gas will be still the dominate part and act as
the load regulation.
Real-time electricity carbon intensity calculation
Hourly electricity generation and demand data were obtained from
the Energy Market Authority (EMA) of Singapore [17,16]. Data for the
year 2019 is the most recent available at the time the research was
undertaken, and is chosen for the detailed analysis. The future electricity
generation and demand data are obtained based on prediction [37]. A
weighted average index in a year basis is used to estimate the hourly
electricity consumption.
The electricity output capacity by each fuel type is distributed ac­
cording to the fuel mix percentage values. The total generating capacity
(Pgen ) in Singapore can be expressed as.
∑ gen
Pgen = Pi,g (1)
where Pgen
i,g represents the electricity output capacity by fuel types. It
is further assumed that the total generating capacity is equal to the
demand for each hour.
The CO2 emissions by power generation technology can be expressed
as.
∑ gen
Egen = Pi,g × ci,g (2)
where ci,g represents the carbon intensity of electricity produced by a
given technology, which values are 402, 839, 965, 0, 671 and 0 kg CO2/
MWh for natural gas (CCGT), distillate oil, coal, biomass, waste incin­
eration and solar PV respectively [26,54,45]. Then the carbon intensity
of the grid Cgen can be expressed as Kopsakangas-Savolainen et al. [27].
Table 1
Estimated generation capacity in 2019, 2030 and 2050 (CCGT: Combined Cycle
Gas Turbine).
[MW] 2019 2030 2050
Egen
Cgen = (3)
Pgen
PV model and meteorological data
The PV system is modelled according to the one diode I-V curve
model of the solar cell as reported in [14] with an ideal maximum power
point tracker (MPPT). The model includes temperature dependence of
the photo-current IL and the saturation current of the diode I0. The Yingli
Solar YL250P-29b is chosen for the proposed modelling analysis. The
key specifications of the PV panel are shown in Table 2. The inverter
efficiency refers to the Steca Grid 3000 efficiency curve [51]. The
decomposition and transposition models are Engerer2 [7] and
Perez1990 [42,43], respectively.
Singapore’s meteorological data is used to estimate the electricity
output from the PV systems and the long-term energy demand of data
centre’s cooling systems and equipment. With global warming, the en­
ergy consumption of the data centre and the energy output from re­
newables would all be affected. According to IPCC - Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change [22], there is possibility of an average
warming of 1.8, 2.8 and 3.4 ◦ C in the global average surface temperature
in the low (B1), medium (A1B) and high (A2) forcing scenarios,
respectively.
In this study, the meteorological data for 2019 (global horizontal
radiation, temperature, dewpoint temperature, and wind speed) have
been downloaded from Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis [11]. The relative
humidity has been calculated from the temperature and dewpoint
temperature using the relationship reported in Lawrence [32]. The
hourly climate scenarios data (global horizontal radiation, temperature,
wind speed, and relative humidity) were obtained from Meteonorm
v7.3.1. Scenarios B1 and A2 as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change [36] were chosen for 2030 and 2050.
Scenarios
One reference scenario corresponding the real situation in 2019 is
assessed according to Singapore’s historic meteorological and energy
statistics data. Based on the solar deployment targets and climate change
in 2030 and 2050, 3 scenarios are defined in order to evaluate the in­
fluence of electricity sector energy mix on the net CO2 emissions of data
centres: S1 – present scenario, S2- 2030 and S3 – 2050. To consider the
influence of global warming, S2 and S3 are further divided into two sub-
scenarios, corresponding to the low (S2-1 and S3-1) and high forcing
respectively (S2-2 and S3-2).
Design of green data centres
Data centre characteristics
A reference data centre in Singapore is chosen to estimate the energy
demand. The total area is 93 m × 20.4 m with 340 cabinets containing
the servers. This is considered as the useful area of the IT room. The data
centre consists of high-density, normal density and storage server racks,
and network equipment with a designed IT load of 12.9 MW. The IT
room is distributed in a hot and cold aisles containment configuration
Table 2
Technical characteristics of the assumed PV panel.
Parameter Value Unit

Petroleum products 95.67 0 0 Nominal power [PMPP] 250 Wp

Natural gas (CCGT)* 12976.23 16861.49 21651.12 Maximum power point voltage [VMPP] 30.23 V
Biomass 0 132.5 132.5 Maximum power point current [IMPP] 8.271 A
Coal 164.0 0 0 Open circuit voltage [VOC] 37.73 V
Waste incineration 256.8 393.18 393.18 Short circuit current [ISC] 8.837 A
Solar PV 174.3 4000 10,000 Reference efficiency [%] 15.4 %

3
F. Wang et al.
and thus no mixing occurs.
The data centre is designed to be cooled by forced circulation with a
water cooled chiller system. The chilled and condenser water tempera­
tures are 7 and 12 ◦ C respectively. Forced circulation is created by
computer room air handling units. The overall cooling system includes
four water-cooled chillers, each of which is equipped with a primary
pump, a waterside economizer in series, a secondary pump, a cooling
water pump, and a water cooling tower. The rated refrigeration capacity
of each water-cooled chiller is 4220 kW with a COP of 5.5 at the design
condition. The power capacities of the primary pump, secondary pump,
and cooling water pump are 55 kW, 75 kW, and 90 kW, respectively. The
rated cooling capacity of each cooling tower is 4880 kW. The energy
efficiency ratio (EER) of water-cooled chillers (4 units) varies along with
the wet bulk temperature. More information of the data centre and
ancillary equipment can be found in our previous work [34].
The key parameter in modelling the power load of data centres is the
IT workload of servers. According to the literature, three representative
IT load profiles (Load Profile A, B and C) are considered in this work, as
shown in Fig. 1. Load Profile A is based on the data provided by the
Internet Service Provider on the Web workload pattern of the university
domain [35], and is publicly used by Rahmani et al. [47] to model the
operation of a data centre. Load Profile B is widely used to test different
cooling system and simulate the data centre cooling demand [21,20].
Load Profile C is based on the assumption that the IT load in certain data
centre can be assumed as constant or with a very little variation over
time [48]. According to previous investigations, the cooling demand is
mainly determined by the IT load [20]. The weekly profiles are further
extended for the whole year to predict the real-time IT load and the
cooling energy of the data centre.
Approaches to achieve zero emissions
Two approaches are proposed for sizing the PV system to achieve the
“greenness” for a data centre. The first approach is based on the net-zero
energy between data centre’s electricity demand and hourly renewable
energy production on an annual basis. The other approach is based on
Fig. 1. Typical data centre weekly IT workload.
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Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 53 (2022) 102769
net-zero CO2 emission, in which the difference between the CO2 emis­
sion by electricity drawing and CO2 saving by excess renewable energy
to the grid equals to zero.
Although the total renewable electricity output could be computa­
tionally equal to the total electricity demand of the data centre on an
annual basis, the hourly power demand of the data centre and the hourly
renewable electricity output are usually different due to the unpredict­
able and intermittent nature of renewable energy. As such, the CO2
emissions due to the hourly mismatch of power demand and renewable
power output can be expressed as.
∑
8760
EMDC = (PDC − PRE )⋅Cgen (4)
i=1
where PDC represents the total power demand of the data centre; and
PRE represents the electricity generation of renewable energy.
WhenEMDC > 0, the data centre would need to draw electricity from
the grid which would lead to CO2 emissions. WhenEMDC < 0, the
renewable electricity output would exceed the demand of the data
centre, which can be sold to the grid. The sold electricity can result in an
equivalent amount of CO2 savings that can be considered as negative
CO2 emissions of the data centre.
The net-zero CO2 emission approach is used to size the renewable
energy system such that Eq. (4) is invariantly equal to zero.
Results
Impact of climate change on energy demand of the data centre
As referred in our previous work [34], a simplified method is
developed to estimate the power consumption of the cooling technology.
Real-time wet bulb temperature, design capacities of water-cooled
chillers and water cooling towers are used as the inputs. The rated ca­
pacities of water-cooled chillers and water cooling towers can be
determined dependent on the IT load and the performance of the cooling
system in variable ambient conditions. In this work, the cooling demand
F. Wang et al. Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 53 (2022) 102769

of non-IT related equipment (including building) is neglected as it CO2 emissions of the data centre
usually only accounts for a very small amount (less than 4 %) according
to the results of Kosik [28]. Based on net-zero energy
To evaluate the performance of the data centre under different Using the net-zero energy approach for sizing the PV, the energy
climate change scenarios, the power usage effectiveness (PUE) is used to demand of the data centre and the energy generation from PV can be
assess the power consumption of data centres, which is defined as: estimated for all scenarios. Results are given in Appendix. It is clear that
for each profile, there are negligible differences in the required PV ca­
Pcs + Pes + PIT
PUE = (5) pacities across all scenarios, which is mainly due to the little impacts of
PIT
climate change on annual power generation, as shown in Table 3.
wherePIT , Pcs and Pes present the power of IT equipment, cooling Although mathematically the renewable energy could supply 100 %
system and other electrical systems (including the illuminating system of the electricity demand of the data centre on an annual basis, it is not
and safety related electrical equipment), respectively. possible for the PV system to meet the instantaneously power demand at
In Singapore, the hourly PUE varies from 1.4 to 1.45 throughout the any time, especially during the night. For comparison, a parameter
year due to the change of ambient temperature. Climate change will called on-site energy matching index (OEMI) is proposed to illustrate the
cause the increase in annual average ambient temperature and the real- hourly discrepancy in electricity supply and demand [9]. In this study,
time ambient temperature. Table 3 shows the ambient temperature, OEMI indicates the proportion of on-site generated PV power that is
including maximum and averaged value, and the corresponding PUE. used in the load of the data centre. It can be observed that an OEMI of
The climate scenarios of B1 and A2 both lead to a slight increase in the less than 50 % can be achieved in all the proposed scenarios. This means
averaged PUE for 2030 and 2050. that the data centre needs to draw electricity from the grid half the time.
When solar radiation is abundant, there is a lot of excess electricity
Installed capacity of PV under different scenarios injected into the grid. When solar radiation is low or during night, power
must be taken from the grid to compensate the deficiency.
Table 3 also presents the estimated PV capacities and their annual The mismatch of PV electricity and data centre’s power demand can
power output based on net-zero energy. It is clear that the required PV be further amplified over a 24-hour period (Fig. 3) when IT workload of
capacity and power generation are clearly affected by the load profiles, Profile A is used as an example. Although the energy consumption of the
even though the designed IT load is same under each profile. The data centre for these scenarios over this period of time is almost the
required PV capacity for Profile A is only about 73 % and 40 % of those same, but the electricity flow exported or imported to the grid varies
for Profile B and C, respectively. This is mainly due to the different total significantly due to the huge difference in generated PV power. For
electricity demand of the data centres. Profile A and C represent the example, On the premise of first meeting the load of the data centre,
lowest and highest annual power demand respective and thus the lowest there is also enough excess PV output can be delivered to the grid during
and highest required PV capacity. Comparatively, the impacts of climate 9 am and 13 pm for both scenarios S1 and S2-1. However, very little
change are not less obvious. In general, the required PV capacities based additional PV power generation can be added to the grid for scenario S3-
on A2 forcing scenarios is slightly higher than those based on B1 forcing 1.
scenarios as described by the IPCC. Although excess renewable energy production can mathematically
“offset” the amount of electricity produced from fossil fuels, the data
Carbon intensity of electricity centre cannot achieve a round-the-clock 100 % renewable electricity or
zero CO2 emission due to the mismatch. Taking Profile A as an example,
The carbon emission intensity of grid electricity is computed based the net CO2 emission, which is the difference between the carbon
on the energy mix, which is presented in Fig. 2. It can be seen that the emission produced by electricity withdraw from the grid and the carbon
hourly CO2 intensity of electricity varies significantly between daytime emission saved by PV energy to the grid, is illustrated in Fig. 4 for a
and nigh due to the intermittency of PV power except for the scenario of typical week. The negative value represents the saved CO2 emission by
S1 due to low share of PV. For S1, the hourly carbon intensity is above excess PV energy to the grid after meeting the requirement of data
400 kg CO2/MWh throughout the year of 2019, while its value can be centre. It is clear that the net CO2 emission flow for these scenarios vary
reduced to 190 kg CO2/MWh and below 50 kg CO2/MWh in the daytime significantly due to the influence of carbon intensity.
under the scenarios of 2030 (S2-1 and S2-2) and 2050 (S3-1 and S3-2). The annual CO2 emission produced by electricity withdraw from the
grid, saved CO2 emission due to excess PV electricity production, and net
CO2 emission are shown in Fig. 5(a). It can be observed that no scenario
can achieve a net zero CO2 emission. The scenario of S1 is the closest to
achieving net zero CO2 emission for all load profiles. The net CO2
Table 3 emissions in S3-1 and S3-2 are almost twice as much as those in S2-1 and
Impact of climate change on main parameters of data centre. S2-2. It is clear that a larger share of PV in the energy mix can lead to a
S1 S2-1 S2-2 S3-1 S3-2 larger net CO2 emission from the green data centre. The reason is that
Minimum ambient 22.05 21.7 22.1 22.2 22.8
the low carbon intensity of electricity coincides with that of the data
temperature (oC) centre, resulting in less carbon emissions saved when the excess elec­
Maximum ambient 33.57 34.5 34.5 34.7 34.9 tricity of the data centre is fed into the grid.
temperature (oC) In addition, it is obvious that the net carbon emission is not linearly
Averaged ambient 26.84 27.50 27.65 27.85 28.32
proportional to the electricity consumption of the data centre. It is
temperature (oC)
Averaged humidity (%) 86.77 87.39 87.37 87.38 86.88 affected by the IT load profiles. For example, even though the electricity
Averaged PUE 1.414 1.427 1.429 1.428 1.431 consumption under Load Profile C is only about 1.5 times and 1.8 times
Required PV capacities of those under Profile A and Profile B, its net carbon emissions are 3.0
Profile A 44.53 44.96 45.28 45.27 45.27 times and 1.94 times of those. This is owing to that Load Profile C has
Profile B 61.69 62.27 62.76 62.66 62.71
Profile C 110.02 111.07 111.94 111.76 111.85
much higher share of electricity consumption during the night, in which
Annual output the hourly carbon intensity is high. In general, it can be concluded that
Profile A 64.67 65.28 65.32 65.37 65.45 the load profile that has more consumptions in daytime but less in in the
Profile B 89.58 90.42 90.54 90.47 90.66 evening can have a lower net CO2 emission.
Profile C 159.75 161.28 161.48 161.37 161.71

5
F. Wang et al.
Fig. 2. Hourly CO2 intensity for different scenarios.
Based on zero CO2 emission
Sizing the PV system based on the net-zero energy approach cannot
achieve zero emission of CO2 due to the variation of the carbon intensity
of the grid. However, installing PV can indeed reduce the total CO2
emission, which implies that in order to realize net-zero CO2 emissions, a
larger capacity of PV is needed. Therefore, using the approach of zero
emission, PV was resized and the results are illustrated in Fig. 5(b).
Comparing with the PV capacity sized based on net-zero energy, it can
be observed that the PV capacity needs to be increased by about 20 % for
S2-1 and S2-2 and 60 % for S3-1 and S3-2 to achieve net zero carbon
emission when different IT workload profiles are considered. Only a PV
capacity increase in 0.99 %, 1.46 % and 1.57 % is required for S1 under
the conditions of Profile A, Profile B and Profile C. Meanwhile, due to the
impact of climate change, the increased PV capacities in 2050 for B1 and
A2 forcing scenarios are more obvious than those in 2030. Moreover, as
Load Profile C has higher net CO2 emissions compared to Load Profile A
and B, the increased PV capacities needed to achieve zero emissions are
also more for Load Profile C.
When using the net-zero CO2 emission approach, far greater excess
electricity can be produced from the on-site PV, but OEMI only sees a
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Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 53 (2022) 102769
slight increase (Fig. 5(c)). The PV power injected to the grid accounts for
49 %, 55 %, 55 %, 63 % and 64 % of the total PV production for S1 to S3-
2 under Load Profile A. In terms of OEMI, less than 56 % of the green
data centre’s electricity use is found to be matched by renewable energy
on an hourly basis for these scenarios, while the OEMI is much lower for
Load Profile B and C, which means higher proportion of PV power
generation needs to be sent to the grid.
Discussions
Under the analysed energy sources of Singapore, the on-site PV
system designed based on the claimed net-zero energy cannot achieve
net zero carbon emission on an hourly basis. In order to achieve net-zero
CO2 emission, its investment will increase 20 % to 60 % (according to
the increased capacity) by increasing the size of PV system. Although it
is a study for specific scenarios, the approach proposed and conclusions
drawn are not limited to the studied case.
With decreasing prices of the battery storage technology, a PV-
battery system could be an alternative, which can shift excess PV elec­
tricity during the sunny hours to evening or less sunny hours. This
F. Wang et al.
Fig. 3. A 24-hour supply and demand profile of the data centre (Profile A, June 21).
Fig. 4. A typical week of net CO2 emission flow of the data centre with IT
workload of profile A (June 18–24).
approach may have a more obvious effect on carbon emission reduction
when renewable energy accounts for a high proportion in electricity.
Therefore, further optimization works should focus on designing the
renewables powered data centres considering not only the emissions but
other objective functions such as cost minimization or maximization of
reliability of supply.
In addition, to attain a real-time 100 % match of carbon-free energy,
the combination of multiple renewable energy sources can improve its
real-time matching with the data centre. For instance, solar energy can
meet the data centre’s power supply on sunny days, and the wind energy
can meet the power demand during non-sunny days, their integration
design can enhance the on-site matching index, reducing the depen­
dence on the electricity grid [25].
7
Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 53 (2022) 102769
It should be noted that this paper used the direct carbon emission
factor for the calculation. The CO2 emission of renewable energy, such
as PV and biomass are assumed to be zero emission. However, there
actually have emission during their life time, a Life Cycle Assessment
(LCA) of the on-site renewable energy integrated data centre is a good
supplement and extension to this research work [5]. Thus, the future
work should also consider the life cycle emission of renewable energy to
accurately achieve the CO2 emission flows.
Conclusions
The increasing energy demand of the data centre industry has put the
sector under pressure to limit its CO2 emissions. Companies have taken
consciousness of the issue and green data centre using renewable energy
has already been investigated and implemented. This paper aimed to
demonstrate that the green data centre could achieve 100 % of renew­
able energy but significantly affect its operation and its associated CO2
emission. To accomplish this goal a data centre located in Singapore and
characterized with different IT workload profiles was designed and
analyzed based on net-zero energy approach and net zero CO2 emission
approach powered by PV system. Five scenarios involving real situation,
climate change and future energy sources were compared.
Sizing the PV system based on the net-zero energy approach cannot
achieve zero emission of CO2 due to the variation of the carbon intensity
of the grid. In terms of on-site energy matching, only approximately 50
% of power generated by PV can be directly used by the data centre
studied in this work, the rest need to rely on the grid to achieve power
import or export. In comparison, in the net-zero CO2 emission approach,
the PV capacity needs to be increased, which are about 20 % and 60 % in
2030 and 2050, respectively for the studied case.
IT load profiles of data centres have significant impact on the net CO2
emission due to the dynamic variation of electricity demand and carbon
intensity. Higher share of electricity consumption of the data centre
during the night will result in higher net CO2 emission due to the high
hourly carbon intensity.
F. Wang et al. Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 53 (2022) 102769

Fig. 5. Key results of the two approaches used for evaluating the performance of green data centres.

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F. Wang et al. Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 53 (2022) 102769

In general, heavy development of a single source of variable Declaration of Competing Interest

renewable energy can be effective in increasing a data center’s hourly
match with carbon-free energy, but it is not sufficient to achieve a 100 %
match with carbon-free energy in every hour of the year. Even though
the oversized renewable energy system produces far more than enough
energy to match the local data center’s hourly consumption, the data
center is still falling short on hourly dynamic carbon-free energy.
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability

CRediT authorship contribution statement The data sources have been provided

Fu Wang: Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Acknowledgement

Writing – review & editing. Victor Nian: Investigation, Writing – orig­
inal draft, Writing – review & editing. Pietro E. Campana: Data cura­
tion, Software. Jakub Jurasz: Investigation, Software, Validation,
Visualization. Hailong Li: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing –
original draft, Writing – review & editing. Li Chen: Writing – review &
editing. Wen-Quan Tao: Supervision, Project administration. Jinyue
Yan: Supervision, Project administration.
We would like to thank the KKS Research Profile ‘Future Energy’ and
the International Exchange Cooperation Project ‘Energy management of
fuel cell powered data centers’ funded jointly by NSFC and STINT,
Project No: 51911530157 (NSFC) and CH2018-7844 (STINT). Fu Wang
also acknowledges the support from National Natural Science Founda­
tion of China (52276010, 51706112), the Natural Science Foundation of
Zhejiang Province of China (Grant No. LY20E060001) and China
Scholarship Council (CSC).

Appendix A-1. Results of the data centre for Scenario S1–S3-2 (Load Profile A).

S1 S2-1 S2-1 S3-1 S3-2

Required PV capacity (MW) 44.53 44.96 45.28 45.27 45.27

Data centre required electricity (GWh/year) 64.67 65.28 65.32 65.37 65.45
Electricity consumption from the grid (GWh/year) 31.29 31.65 32.13 31.34 32.08
Electricity provided by renewable energy (GWh/year) 33.37 33.64 33.19 34.02 33.37
On-site energy matching index (%) 51.61 51.52 50.82 52.05 50.98
Electricity grid emission intensity (kg/MWh) 400.07 375.81 376.03 340.88 340.80
CO2 emission by electricity withdraw (ton/year) 13616.78 12791.62 12978.37 12494.64 12774.09
Saved CO2 emission by excess PV (ton/year) 13345.70 9213.19 9349.61 5447.48 5455.43
Net CO2 emission (ton/year) 271.08 3578.43 3628.75 7047.16 7318.66

Appendix A-2. Results of the data centre for Scenario S1–S3-2 (Load Profile B).

S1 S2-1 S2-2 S3-1 S3-2

Required PV capacity (MW) 61.69 62.27 62.76 62.66 62.71

Data centre required electricity (GWh/year) 89.58 90.42 90.54 90.47 90.66
Electricity consumption from the grid (GWh/year) 50.27 50.80 51.45 50.57 51.47
Electricity provided by renewable energy (GWh/year) 39.31 39.62 39.09 39.90 39.20
On-site energy matching index (%) 43.88 43.81 43.18 44.10 43.23
Electricity grid emission intensity (kg/MWh) 433.84 375.81 376.03 340.88 340.80
CO2 emission by electricity withdraw (ton/year) 22010.73 20673.60 20928.49 20426.59 20762.69
Saved CO2 emission by excess PV (ton/year) 21454.86 15043.69 15194.32 9249.34 9099.30
Net CO2 emission (ton/year) 555.87 5629.91 5734.17 11177.26 11663.39

Appendix A-3. Results of the data centre for Scenario S1–S3-2 (Load Profile C).

S1 S2-1 S2-2 S3-1 S3-2

Required PV capacity (MW) 110.02 111.07 111.94 111.76 111.85

Data centre required electricity (GWh/year) 159.75 161.28 161.48 161.37 161.71
Electricity consumption from the grid (GWh/year) 96.24 97.27 97.42 96.68 97.32
Electricity provided by renewable energy (GWh/year) 63.51 64.02 64.06 64.68 64.39
On-site energy matching index (%) 39.76 39.69 39.67 40.08 39.82
Electricity grid emission intensity (kg/MWh) 433.84 375.81 376.03 340.88 340.80
CO2 emission by electricity withdraw (ton/year) 42129.72 39631.70 39696.85 39151.33 39403.44
Saved CO2 emission by excess PV (ton/year) 41052.58 28731.09 28793.95 17588.31 17340.43
Net CO2 emission (ton/year) 1077.13 10900.61 10902.90 21563.01 22063.01

Appendix B-1. Results for green data centres based on zero carbon emission (Load Profile A)

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F. Wang et al. Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 53 (2022) 102769

S1 S2-1 S2-2 S3-1 S3-2

Data centre required electricity (GWh/year) 64.67 65.28 65.32 65.37 65.45
Total renewable electricity output (GWh/year) 65.30 76.81 77.00 98.62 100.46
Electricity consumption from the grid (GWh/year) 31.22 30.44 30.88 28.66 29.10
Renewable electricity to the grid (GWh/year) 31.85 41.97 42.56 61.91 64.11
On-site energy matching index (%) 51.73 53.37 52.73 56.16 55.54

Appendix B-2. Results for green data centres based on zero carbon emission (Load Profile B)

S1 S2-1 S2-2 S3-1 S3-2

Data centre required electricity (GWh/year) 61.69 62.27 62.76 62.66 62.71
Total renewable electricity output (GWh/year) 90.89 108.56 109.00 143.23 146.48
Electricity consumption from the grid (GWh/year) 50.16 49.48 50.03 47.80 48.21
Renewable electricity to the grid (GWh/year) 79.36 95.28 96.27 128.37 131.98
On-site energy matching index (%) 44.00 45.28 44.74 47.17 46.83

Appendix B-3. Results for green data centres based on zero carbon emission (Load Profile C).

S1 S2-1 S2-2 S3-1 S3-2

Data centre required electricity (GWh/year) 159.75 161.28 161.48 161.37 161.71
Total renewable electricity output (GWh/year) 162.27 196.38 196.58 263.12 267.28
Electricity consumption from the grid (GWh/year) 96.08 95.25 95.45 92.24 92.70
Renewable electricity to the grid (GWh/year) 98.60 130.35 130.55 193.99 198.27
On-site energy matching index (%) 39.86 40.94 40.89 42.84 42.68

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