Exclusive Video: The Road to Net Zero with Sophia Flucker

At Data Centre LIVE, this session with Sophia Flucker, Technical Director at MiCiM Ltd provided insights into the key drivers behind sustainable practices, the latest developments in the field, and effective strategies to minimise environmental impact. 

For the discussion as part of Data Centre Magazine’s inaugural and fully virtual event, viewers across the globe asked Flucker a variety of questions in a bid to make the industry’s net zero dreams a more tangible reality.

Data Centres and the Road to Net Zero

A chartered mechanical engineer with a background in data centres focused on cooling, with MiCiM Flucker is involved with the operational base of facilities, looking at energy assessments and how to make data centres more efficient.

“We need to reduce our emissions to zero or near zero and then offset the remainder,” she opened, establishing what is required of operators to truly be working toward or at net zero performance.

She added: “Although we can make improvements in efficiency - we can cool things more efficiently, we can have more efficient hardware so that we can do more computation using less, less energy - that's not outpacing the demand. We can do more with less. 

“It's interesting that a lot of the focus on energy efficiency tends to be about using less electricity or using energy more efficiently. That's great, but we haven't up to now really been looking at Scope 3, which is a really big part of the picture.”

Scope 3 is referring to other indirect emissions that occur in the value chain, such as emissions from purchased goods or transport, for example.

As part of her comprehensive talk, she also alluded to the fact that solutions can be over-designed, where sometimes simply refurbishing or building anew with reductions and optimisations - ensuring flexibility - will help offset environmental impact later on in its lifecycle.

This includes end of life and considerations on disassembly, and deconstruction to minimise impact.

“I think there's a bigger question which is looking at circularity of design,” she concluded. “This is kind of getting away from thinking of the waste in the same way. We're thinking about the future design for disassembly because it's just such an important part of it.

“At the moment only 20 to 30% of construction and demolition waste is recovered or recycled. So clearly we've got a long way to go. We need to start looking at waste as a resource.”

To watch any of our other speakers from Data Centre LIVE, click here.
To find out more about Data Centre LIVE, click here. 
To find out more about upcoming Data Centre events, click here.
To take a look at our previous events, click here.

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Other magazines that may be of interest - Mobile Magazine.

Please also check out our upcoming event - Cloud and 5G LIVE on October 11 and 12 2023.

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