This interview was provided by Penta Infra and has been frivolously edited for size and readability.
Penta Infra’s new BRU01 in Brussels is a 7.2 MW, carbon-neutral knowledge centre designed round a resource-sharing structure. The challenge gained Knowledge Centre of the 12 months on the 2025 DCR Awards and Greatest Knowledge Centre Sustainability Challenge on the 2025 Datacloud Awards.
To set out clearly what makes it completely different, and the way the identical rules may inform future knowledge centre and campus builds, Penta Infra CEO Bob Sprengers and Dieter Roefs, knowledge centre professional at actual property developer Ghelamco, define the challenge’s key sustainability options, the advantages these create for purchasers and neighbouring organisations, and the practicality of scaling such measures throughout the broader trade.
Dieter, again to the start: how did the event come about?
Penta Infra BRU01 was the primary constructing in a significant redevelopment by Ghelamco of a enterprise park that belongs to Brussels College. It’s referred to as the Green Energy Park, it’s in Zellik, northwest Brussels. The park was designed to be a vital a part of the Belgian R&D panorama by way of the collaboration of the builders with anchor tenants together with the College and the Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussels (Brussels College Hospital). The information centre additionally hosts the VSC Flemish Supercomputer, essentially the most highly effective high-performance computing infrastructure within the nation.
From the beginning there was a imaginative and prescient of a sustainable campus the place sources could possibly be shared. We introduced educational analysis in drugs, life sciences and expertise along with digital companies, reinventing the enterprise park structure alongside sustainable traces and equipping it for tomorrow’s digital economic system.
Bob, what would you say makes the information centre so sustainable?
Effectively, I can define what you may name the mainstream sustainable and efficiency options.
Penta Infra BRU01 is carbon and water-neutral. It’s a low affect construct, with all key elements – primarily aluminium and glass – reclaimable and reusable. It supplies clients with 7.2 MW of IT load, based mostly on a 12.5 MVA energy feed all of which is immediately traceable to native renewables, and it has a photovoltaic southern facade which may generate as much as 390 kW.
The information centre has a design PUE of lower than 1.2 with a modular structure to right-size energy overhead. It’s designed for 100% free cooling utilizing excessive water temperatures. No piped water is used. Rainwater is recovered and saved beneath the information centre. In hotter climate there’s adiabatic help (dry cooling) and compressor use is 100% offset by the photovoltaics.
The opposite factor that marks our Brussels knowledge centre out as completely different is its excessive stage of third-party certification. It’s ‘triple-certified’, with a BREEAM ‘Glorious’ score for round and sustainable constructing practices, EDGE Advanced status, and Uptime Institute Tier III certification for Design and Operational Sustainability.
How concerning the relationship between the information centre and the remainder of the enterprise park? Dieter, how does it differ from different campuses?
The place it’s distinctive is in its imaginative and prescient of useful resource sharing by way of the Inexperienced Enterprise Park. The park shares rainwater, it shares vitality from the solar, and in addition shares the warmth and energy from the information centre by way of a sensible grid. Like an ecosystem in nature, nothing operates in isolation, making every little thing extra vitality environment friendly.
The information centre has warmth alternate capabilities in a thermal good grid which might be used to warmth neighbouring buildings. We additionally included a sensible microgrid to make sure an energy-sharing neighborhood was sensible. We labored with Fluvius (the Flemish Distribution System Operator) to construct an on-site substation. The information centre gensets, fuelled by low-carbon HVO (renewable Hydro-treated Vegetable Oil) with 2 MW extra capability, can be utilized to stabilise or inject energy into the native grid. If wanted, in ‘Island Mode’ there’s adequate native energy to help the entire enterprise park.
The advantages will develop because the park grows. As new buildings are added, rainwater might be recovered from them and saved in a basin within the knowledge centre sub-basement. As new buildings go up, they will even function photovoltaic facades that may energy them in addition to offering extra to the information centre when it’s wanted.
Work has began on the second constructing, a laboratory. This might be adopted by a high-rise workplace block designed to cater for tutorial analysis and blue chips. With the infrastructure developed for Penta Infra BRU01, the park buildings can work together with one another to generate and preserve sources.
Might this be a mannequin for future developments?
Positively! The truth is I might actually encourage knowledge centre builders to come back and have a look when they’re on the strategy planning stage.
We hope that the Inexperienced Enterprise Park mannequin might be seemed again on as the start of a brand new wave of what EU tips confer with as ‘Citizen’s Power Communities’ (CECs). A CEC permits for peer-to-peer multi-vector vitality buying and selling of electrical energy and warmth. Different firms, buildings, belongings massive or small, on and off-campus could possibly be concerned. For instance, the information centre might turn into the direct vacation spot for all surplus photo voltaic vitality generated on the campus whereas all future developments on the campus might turn into recipients of warmth from BRU01. I feel we are going to see many knowledge centre operated CECs within the subsequent few years.
Bob, you have to be very happy to be working one in every of Europe’s most sustainable knowledge centres. What are the advantages you assume Penta Infra’s BRU01 facility brings to your clients and different stakeholders?
I feel Penta Infra BRU01 exhibits that with superior planning and cautious collaboration we are able to construct amenities that shine each by way of their knowledge processing functionality and their environmental and neighborhood usefulness. That is the place the trade must be.
Take AI and HPC. BRU01 will host the VSC Flemish Supercomputer, essentially the most highly effective excessive efficiency computing infrastructure within the nation. It is a world-leading array that may help innovation and new breakthroughs for presidency, trade, and researchers. The identical flexibility that allows the VSC can be very engaging to different AI-focused clients. BRU01 presents an enormous vary of energy densities with each air and liquid cooling, so it could possibly energy Excessive-Efficiency Computing and AI, in addition to conventional colocation configurations.
On the vitality facet, Penta Infra BRU01 could possibly be a blueprint for the long run, and it couldn’t be higher timed. Knowledge centre sustainability is usually outlined purely by way of effectivity and the deployment of low-carbon energy. By making a blueprint for neighborhood useful resource sharing, this growth expands the definition to incorporate social and governance rules in addition to the setting. BRU01 and the Inexperienced Enterprise Park display that collaborative planning which advantages society can speed up each digitisation and the vitality transition.
