“The sum of us is greater than our parts,” is the key message to come out of the Best Innovative New Ways to Reduce Carbon Footprints roundtable held last week to preview a new book on building sustainable infrastructure. Advanced by Dean Nelson, CEO of iMasons and author of one book chapters in Greener Data: Actionable Insights from Industry Leaders, this quote encapsulates the intent of the new publication and the preview session – to draw together industry and thought leaders who can share their experiences and their success in reducing the carbon (and other environmental) impact of digital infrastructure. Scheduled for launch this coming Earth Day (April 22nd), this new publication could not be more timely: data centre networks are a significant contributor to global carbon emissions, and without innovation intervention this growing sector will only increase its consumption of the world’s energy – a scenario that we cannot afford in the current climate crisis.
The brainchild of Jaymie Scotto Cutaia, founder of PR and marketing services firm JSA, Greener Data is designed to deliver a broad and diverse set of perspectives on how data centre and telecom providers around the globe are tackling this critical challenge. The book consists of 20 chapters, by 24 seasoned practitioners and SMEs, who hail from Europe, the US and Asia. Book chapters are as unique as the authors: readers can expect well researched and thoughtful commentary on driving sustainability through liquid cooling and digital sobriety in provider ecosystems, subsea connectivity, revolutionary storage technologies, programs to preserve local biodiversity, standards, tracking metrics and sustainability tickets, operational best practices and optimizing to access stranded capacity, dark green energy carbon negative goals, use of renewables to power the Fourth Industrial Revolution, high efficiency energy systems and software defined power, aligning sustainability and business objectives, factory-built data centres, ESG and green investing, and more…. The book contains a wealth of information – something for everyone who is committed to improving the environmental performance of data centre and telecom networks.
Newfound commitment to sustainability in this sector is evident in the book – and was on proud display at the Best Innovative New Ways roundtable. Representing a subset of book authors, roundtable participants from iMasons, EdgeConneX, Kohler, Virtual Power Systems, Novva Data Centers, Switch, and BDx Data Centers, met to describe their motivations for contributing to the book. This personal commitment was summarized neatly by Switch EVP Bill Kleyman, who noted “Our future can be really different, depending on what we do today.” To address the present, panelists also outlined the content in their respective chapters – the focus of critical sustainability activity at an individual facility level or by the industry as a whole. A last question posed by facilitator Jaymie Scotto Cutaia, asked participants to share their views on what the industry might look like in five years time. A welcome response in this challenging time, their optimism prompted one roundtable attendee from AT&T to respond in kind: “Awesome discussion, lots of work to do! We can do it.”
To meet roundtable participants for a book preview, please see the video presentation below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-exnZ7rK7E
Published by Soul Excellence Publishing, the book will be available on Amazon in print and ebook formats. Stay tuned!
