Huawei Global Data Center Forum promotes sustainability

Huawei has recently held the Global Data Center Facility Forum 2022, with the theme of "Smart DC, Building the Future", in Monaco to drive sustainability in the data centre industry. The conference convened more than 200 business leaders, industry experts, clients, and partners from around the world to establish valuable connections and discuss key issues facing the rapidly changing industry, such as decarbonisation and digitalisation.

Charles Yang, Senior Vice President of Huawei and CEO of Huawei Data Center Facility Team, said in his opening remarks that as we enter the intelligent era and carbon neutrality has become the global shared mission, data centres will see changes in the service form, energy supply, and operation and maintenance models. Huawei Data Centre Facility Team will embrace the changes by optimising organisational structure, continuously investing in innovation, and building a healthy business ecosystem to drive the sustainable development of the data centre industry.

Green data centres play a critical role in achieving net-zero goals. In pursuit of green and low-carbon data centres, Huawei believes that data centre facilities need to go green throughout the life cycle. It means the facility features a green construction with a prefabricated modular architecture, a green cooling solution to lower PUE, a green power supply with ultra-high power density, and AI-enabled green management.

Data centres play an important role in helping Europe to achieve carbon-neutral ambitions 

When it comes to the role of green ICT playing in Europe's path to decarbonisation, He Bo, President of Huawei Digital Power Western Europe, pointed out that low-carbon ICT infrastructure, such as data centres, will play an important supporting role for Europe to achieve the goal of "Carbon Neutrality by 2050" in the future. By integrating digital and power electronics technologies, Huawei provides innovative solutions such as fast delivery, extreme PUE, and centralised energy storage to create low-carbon data centres and contribute to a greener world.

In his keynote on Next-Generation DC, Sanjay Kumar Sainani, Global Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Huawei Data Center Business noted that we envision the next generation centre to be converged, low carbon, and smart. Four innovations - Bit innovation, Watt innovation, Heat innovation, and Architecture innovation - will support future-oriented, sustainable data centres.

Other industry experts also shared their insights into how to power the green and digital transition of the data centre industry at the event. Simon McCormick, CTO of Echelon, introduced their digital transformation path towards carbon neutrality.

Kim Gunnelius, COO and Co-founder at Ficolo, talked about operating data centres with 100% green power and lower PUE, and enabling the industry to reduce its carbon footprint through data centres.

Xavier Matagne, Group Development Officer at Africa Data Centres, highlighted that modular and prefabricated construction excels at high quality, easy site management, low risk, and green site operation compared with traditional solutions.

Prescott Augustus GAYLORD, Senior Vice President and Head of Sustainability at DBS, shared practices in achieving decarbonisation and digitalisation from a financial institution perspective.