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When people talk about datacentres and sustainability, the conversation usually starts with electricity, water and land. But with engineering, those debates are only part of the story. Long before a datacentre’s electricity or water use is scrutinised, its sustainability profile is shaped by feasibility studies, load calculations, airflow simulations, digital twins and environmental assessments. “You cannot say one site will be built the same as the next site,” says Leon Kleyn, technical director: mechanical, at WSP in Africa. “It’s dependent on a lot of factors: the requirement from the client, where the datacentre will be located and the impact in terms of ambient conditions.”

Location is the first major design decision in a datacentre build, and ambient conditions determine how efficiently the facility can operate. Cooler climates allow engineers to use outside air or lower energy cooling modes for much longer periods, improving the site’s annual power usage effectiveness (PUE) and water usage effectiveness (WUE). Hotter environments require more mechanical cooling to keep servers within safe operating limits. In regions with reliable water supply, engineers can use water cooled or evaporative systems that deliver much better energy performance. In water-scarce areas, those systems are not viable because they place additional demand on a limited resource. “It’s easy to say, ‘Yes, we can use water to cool it because we will use less energy’,” Kleyn says. “But in a water-scarce environment, that’s not an option.