[E-impact] Re: Sustainable Procurement Guidelines for Data Centres and Servers from United Nations Environment Programme United for Efficiency (U4E)

[Sébastien Rumley <[e-mail]>]

Hello Luis,

Many thanks for this (with some delay), this is of high interest indeed.

What I find particularly interesting is these metrics ITEEsv (IT 
Equipment Energy Efficiency for servers) and ITEUsv (IT Equipment 
Utilization for servers). They are IEC/ISO standards... but there is 
almost no mention of it in scientific literature. *As someone in this 
group ever worked with this stuff? I guess this is pure operational 
stuff. Would it be too early to conclude that there is scant literature 
on data center operations ?*

I find interesting that the utilization rate is subject to objectives 
(>80% by 2031). I wonder if there is public data describing ITEUsv 
figures "in the wild". And I also wonder how such a metric is aggregated 
"data-center wide". I see how to calculate utilisation rate of a 
computer. But of mulitple ones... is that just an average ? But if there 
are many "small" servers with low utilisation and a few "big" servers 
high utilization, shouldn't we use a weighted average ? *If anyone has 
some data on this, I am highly interested.*

Best,

Sébastien


On 30.07.2025 23:51, Luis M. Contreras wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> this could be a reference of interest. The United Nations, through the 
> initiative called United for Efficiency (U4E) has recently released a 
> white paper with focus on Sustainable Procurement Guidelines for Data 
> Centres and Servers, which I think is of interest since a number of 
> metrics and rations are described. The guidelines aim to represent a 
> global best practice reference to support sustainable procurement and 
> operation of data centres and servers. They balance technological 
> feasibility, economic considerations, and environmental impact 
> mitigation to foster a sustainable digital transformation aligned with 
> international climate and development goals.
>
> The guidelines can be found here: 
> 2025-U4E-Sustainable-Procurement-for-Data-Centers-and-Servers_Final.pdf 
> <https://united4efficiency.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025-U4E-Sustainable-Procurement-for-Data-Centers-and-Servers_Final.pdf>
>
> In addition to that, slides from a webinar that presented that 
> guidelines are available here: 
> UNEP-U4E-Launch-Webinar-SPP-Guidelines-on-Data-Centres.pdf 
> <https://united4efficiency.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/UNEP-U4E-Launch-Webinar-SPP-Guidelines-on-Data-Centres.pdf>
>
> Best regards
>
> Luis
>
> -- 
> ___________________________________________
> Luis M. Contreras
> [e-mail]
> [e-mail]
> Global CTIO unit / Telefonica
>
-- 
Dr. Sébastien RUMLEY, Professor
iCoSys Institute, part of
HEIA-FR - School of Engineering and Architecture - Fribourg, part of
HES-SO - University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland