The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the World Bank have released “Green Data Centers: Towards a Sustainable Digital Transformation — A Practitioner’s Guide,” a policy-and-implementation oriented publication that tackles a straightforward challenge: data centers are now core national infrastructure, but their growth can translate into significant pressure on electricity systems, water resources, and emissions profiles if sustainability is not engineered in from the start.
Rather than treating “green data centers” as a branding concept, the guide frames sustainability as a set of measurable decisions across the full lifecycle—planning, design, construction, operations, and end-of-life. It is aimed at both public-sector and private-sector audiences, including regulators setting requirements, operators managing performance, utilities planning grid impacts, and investors assessing risk and readiness.
Key themes that make the guide practically useful include:
- Metrics and accountability: The guide emphasizes the importance of using consistent performance indicators (for energy, cooling, and resource efficiency) and of building reporting expectations into procurement, permitting, and ongoing operations. This enables like-for-like benchmarking and reduces “greenwashing” risk.
- Design and retrofit levers: It highlights common technical pathways to reduce energy intensity, including more efficient cooling strategies, airflow management, equipment optimization, and operating practices that raise utilization and reduce waste.
- Power strategy and renewables: It discusses approaches to decarbonizing electricity consumption, such as renewable sourcing arrangements and planning for grid integration, with attention to reliability and the operational needs of mission-critical infrastructure.
- Water and heat: The guide treats water use as a first-order sustainability issue (not an afterthought), and encourages heat management strategies, including opportunities for waste-heat reuse where feasible.
- Governance and procurement: For governments and large buyers, the guide outlines how to embed sustainability requirements into contracting, incentives, and compliance regimes so that “green” performance is rewarded and sustained over time.
For digital economy stakeholders, the guide is useful as a bridge between ambition and execution: it translates high-level climate and efficiency goals into concrete design and operational considerations, and it reinforces that technical standards and measurement discipline are essential if sustainability is to scale alongside digital growth.
