Infrastructure Masons (iMasons), a nonprofit digital infrastructure skilled community, and GRESB, a worldwide ESG evaluation supplier, have introduced a partnership to create a worldwide sustainability benchmark for knowledge middle investments.
The initiative goals to offer institutional traders with standardized metrics to judge the environmental efficiency of knowledge middle property.
The benchmark is meant to help capital allocation, danger evaluation, and due diligence by providing sector-specific knowledge on vitality use and different sustainability indicators. A pilot program is deliberate for the third quarter of 2025, with broader market entry anticipated in 2026.
Chris Pyke, chief innovation officer at GRESB, instructed DCN the prevailing benchmarks are usually not tailor-made to the distinct wants and circumstances of knowledge middle operators – notably as they develop shortly in response to AI and different linked applied sciences.
“Knowledge facilities are essentially totally different from conventional actual property or infrastructure property in how they function and devour sources,” he says.
These high-density, mission-critical environments have exceptionally excessive vitality calls for, complicated cooling programs, and distinctive utilization patterns pushed by digital workloads.
“You possibly can’t benchmark a hyperscale facility utilizing the identical lens you apply to an workplace constructing or retail middle – it could be like evaluating a System 1 automotive with a metropolis emissions check,” Pyke says.
Metrics Focusing on Knowledge Heart Efficiency
Pyke explains because the sector turns into the bodily spine of AI, cloud computing, and international digital infrastructure, metrics are required that replicate its distinct improvement and operational realities.
A sector-specific benchmark permits GRESB and iMasons to outline materials indicators and metrics particularly for knowledge facilities.
“This may allow us to ship extra correct comparisons and help focused efficiency enchancment for this mission-critical infrastructure,” he says.
From Pyke’s perspective, vitality is the tip of the spear.
“From 2020 to 2024, vitality use per knowledge middle in our benchmarks jumped practically 30% – a mirrored image of demand, density, and digital acceleration,” he explains.
The brand new benchmark will think about a number of elements of vitality use, together with electrical energy demand, energy utilization effectivity, peak demand, and greenhouse fuel emissions.
These elements can be normalized and in comparison with knowledge facilities in comparable circumstances and geographic areas.
The info middle benchmark will do that with a brand new modular construction that enables traders to simply see connections between efficiency targets, related actions, and measured outcomes.
This may allow traders to look at snapshots of efficiency and assess whether or not an information middle is presently performing effectively relative to its friends. Buyers and managers will even have the ability to observe and talk enhancements over time.
Pyke provides that GRESB and iMasons are exploring a number of social points, together with employee well being and security, workforce training, together with STEM coaching, and group engagement.
“Knowledge facilities are greater than shoppers of electrons. They’re locations individuals work in and, in some circumstances, stay round,” he says. “These indicators give traders a measure of a facility’s social license to function and its capacity to draw and retain a professional workforce.”
Constructing on Current Benchmarks
The trouble builds on GRESB’s present infrastructure and actual property benchmarks, which embrace knowledge from 41 corporations masking 842 knowledge middle property with a mixed gross asset worth of $115 billion.
The group’s most up-to-date whitepaper reported that common vitality use amongst knowledge middle property in its actual property benchmark elevated from 59.6 million kWh in 2020 to 76.0 million kWh in 2024, underscoring the sector’s rising energy calls for.
A working group of greater than 20 {industry} contributors in vitality, automation, computing, and asset administration will inform the brand new benchmark.
It’s being developed in response to rising investor curiosity within the environmental affect of knowledge facilities, which have change into a key driver of vitality demand and capital flows.
In keeping with JLL’s newest international knowledge middle forecast report, $170 billion in knowledge middle asset worth is projected to hunt improvement or everlasting financing in 2025.
“Buyers want this info primarily based on a reputable, international commonplace that enables them to believe within the knowledge and offers the power to check sustainability efficiency and danger throughout totally different asset courses, Pyke says.
Sustainability Takes Heart Stage
In July 2024, the iMasons Local weather Accord – a coalition together with Google, AWS, Meta, Microsoft, Digital Realty, and Schneider Electrical – known as for industry-wide adoption of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) to enhance carbon transparency.
The group has urged knowledge middle suppliers to reveal Scope 3 emissions utilizing EPDs, describing them because the environmental equal of a vitamin label. The transfer goals to speed up sustainability efforts throughout the information middle provide chain.
Sustainability has change into an space of accelerating focus within the {industry}, from renewable vitality sources to inexperienced constructing supplies.
Pyke says by introducing sector-specific indicators and peer comparisons, this benchmark will empower traders to distinguish between leaders and laggards, allocate capital extra confidently, and interact proactively with operators to drive worth creation.
“Once you’re taking a look at $170 billion in international knowledge middle improvement, transparency isn’t optionally available – it’s foundational,” he says.
Pyke says by defining what issues – vitality, emissions, water, individuals – the benchmarks assist align stakeholders round credible, actionable knowledge.
“This isn’t about checking containers,” he says. “It’s about making a dynamic suggestions loop that drives smarter design, higher operations, and extra assured capital deployment.”
