The collection of key datacentre sustainability data by operators is faltering after years of progress, according to research by server farm resiliency think tank Uptime Institute.
The organisation’s 15th annual Uptime Institute global datacentre survey reveals that, over the past 12 months, the amount of sustainability data being collected by operators across almost all metrics has stagnated or even declined. This is based on the feedback of 800 datacentre owners and operators, plus more than 1,000 suppliers and consultants, who took part in this year’s survey.
As detailed in the report, while the energy consumption of datacentres remains one of the easiest metrics to collect data on, the number of operators keeping tabs on this is down on 2024 levels. For example, 84% of respondents said they had collected energy consumption data for their facilities, and 74% said they do the same for their sites’ power usage effectiveness (PUE) scores.
However, despite Uptime Institute acknowledging that these two metrics are among the most commonly tracked by operators, the percentage that collect data on them has fallen from 89% for energy consumption and from 76% for PUE since 2024.
“After years of gradual increases, Uptime’s annual survey results show that sustainability data collection for nearly all metrics has stagnated or even declined since 2024. While PUE and energy consumption remain widely tracked, the broad pattern is static,” said the Uptime Institute in its report.
“The only metric to show a measurable (but slight) increase in collection is water usage, led by a five percentage point increase in Europe, presumably motivated by the European Union’s Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), which requires reporting of water usage.”
Meanwhile, the downturn in the number of operators collecting data pertaining to other datacentre sustainability metrics is being attributed to “more laissez-faire governance regimes” being adopted in other regions of the world.
“For example, the US Securities and Exchange Commission abandoned efforts to require climate risk reporting – including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – early in 2024…and the European Commission has delayed GHG reporting under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and intends to exempt many organisations from its scope,” the report continued.
Uptime said there are also “practical considerations” that might be hindering operators in their efforts to collect sustainability data too. “Large expansion projects, such as AI datacentres in development or [ones that have been] recently commissioned, have high resource consumption,” said the report. “This makes sustainability goals more challenging to achieve and reduces operators’ appetite for collecting and reporting the data.”
The industry’s reliance on using power purchase agreements and energy attribute certificates, to balance out or offset their energy consumption and carbon emissions, are also coming at an increasingly higher cost, the report added.
The report went on to acknowledge that Uptime’s previous reports have uncovered data that suggests many datacentre operators may be rolling back their sustainability commitments or postponing the deadlines for achieving their net-zero goals.
“Given that many datacentre companies rely heavily on offsets to achieve these goals, these higher costs may have led some operators to quietly retire [their] net-zero targets or to stop tracking and reporting emissions entirely,” the report added.
