OCP Summit: new industry sustainability initiatives

Sustainability had a lot of attention at OCP Summit in San Diego, CA, October 18-20. We would like to highlight some new initiatives for Data Center Facility Sustainability as well as the updates on Wyoming Hyperscale White Box.

Priya Chhiba, of Google, presented “Key Focus Areas for Data Center Facility Sustainability”.[1] This is a new effort within the OCP Sustainability initiative.[2] P. Chiba highlighted the importance of sustainability and the responsibility of data center providers for use of natural resources (and, water, air, and materials) with a positive impact on society. New sustainability initiatives will focus on the decarbonization of non-IT related facilities’ infrastructure tied to DCF Scope. The project leaders “will engage industry partners to accelerate the path to net zero via collaboration and innovation in products and technologies - leveraging OCPs unique combination of hyper-scale influence, vendors, and sub-projects”. Sustainability has a global social economic impact, this is why it is important to bring the community together and collaborate on sustainability developing strategies and roadmaps moving forward.

Trenton Thornock, Founder, of Wyoming Hyperscale White Box, provided an overview of the Wyoming Hyperscale project with a lot of emphasis on the Sustainable Hyperscale Data Center Ecosystem. The project status was provided:?

? 30MW Phase 1 - Master-Planned 120MW campus

? Liquid-cooled ITE, Designing to OCP guidance in progress, eliminating the use of water

? Heat Reuse — multi-application

? Primary power grid + renewable generation

? Certifications (in progress). Design highlights are illustrated in Figure 1

Figure 1. Wyoming Hyperscale White Box-Design Highlights[3]

It was highlighted that OCP Integration accelerates resource savings, resiliency, de-carbonization, and heat reuse. OCP Content is Integrated into the design including OCP Cooling Environments and OCP Advanced Cooling Facilities. The project has an amazing sustainability impact. The heat and energy reuse will allow to build of a 30-acre indoor producing greenhouse for indoor farming, have a geothermal HVAC replacement, and feed Wasatch Valley, Utah & Wyoming. This will allow having fresher produce instead of importing it mainly from California’s Central Valley. It also brings climate-positive bonuses: transportation carbon footprint and GHG reduction. ?Do you know that each truckload of produce sent from Central Valley of California to Park City or to the Salt Lake Valley displaces approximately 70 gallons= 1, 570 LBS of CO2? It means over 1.5 tons of CO2 reduction per round trip!

Overall, these new sustainability initiatives are very important and urgently needed because they are paving the path to a greener and healthier future for our planet.

[1] Priya Chhiba, “Key Focus Areas for Data Center Facility Sustainability, OCP Global Summit, Oct 18-22, 2022, San Jose, CA,

[2] OCP Sustainability Initiative, https://www.opencompute.org/wiki/OCP_Sustainability_Initiative

[3] Sustainable, Hyperscale Data Ecosystem, OCP Global Summit, Oct 18-22, 2022, San Jose, CA, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hLwFMk-vbm9kS_lMFJxOPnAl3UHAVzzB/view