Data centres are a fundamental part of our digital infrastructure and economy, and the demand for them shows no signs of slowing down.
As crucial as they are, however, they also come with unique challenges—like high energy demands, legislative requirements, and complex ownership models—that make managing them in an efficient, sustainable, and compliant way more difficult.
To meet increasing demands for sustainability from regulators and investors and address these challenges, data centres need robust reporting. Not only is accurate, dynamic data and reporting essential to reducing carbon emissions and becoming net zero, but it helps to ensure optimal performance, protect these assets from risk, and attract investment.
Read on to learn more about the key data and reporting challenges facing data centre owners, operators, and developers, the growing importance of data collection for data centres, and how using the right software can simplify ESG reporting and enhance your operations.
3 ESG data and reporting challenges for data centres
1. Navigating regulatory requirements and investor expectations
There are two key regulations currently impacting data centres: the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and EU Taxonomy.
To comply with these regulations, data centres must track and report on key performance indicators such as:
- Power usage effectiveness (PUE)
- Share of renewable energy
- IT equipment utilisation
- Waste heat reuse
Currently, these requirements are disclosure-based, meaning that they must be reported yearly but there are no limits that need to be achieved or penalties for non-compliance. However, this may change in the coming years as regulations continue to evolve.
Recent research also highlights how ESG impacts investors’ decisions. According to CBRE’s 2024 Global Data Center Investor Intentions Survey, 93% of investors say ESG is an important factor in their data centre investment strategy.
At a minimum, data centre operators, developers, and owners need accurate data and reporting to stay compliant. However, those who put the right structures and systems in place now will be better equipped to meet regulatory responsibilities as they develop—and gain a competitive advantage with investors.
2. Gleaning insights from disconnected data
Collecting and analyzing the right data is essential to understand the performance of your data centres at both an asset and portfolio level. But with so many dispersed systems, inputs, and reporting parties, it can be difficult to capture all the information you need, let alone actually leverage it.
Accurate, up-to-date information is necessary to make data-driven decisions about where to invest your finances or resources to have the greatest impact. For example, looking at your KPIs monthly or yearly lets you spot opportunities for improvement (like optimising energy sources), while understanding your PUE energy ratio is a useful way to measure performance against other data centres to gauge its reliability and attractiveness to potential investors or tenants.
With the right ESG data to hand, you can shift from a reactive approach to a proactive one. This enables you to improve the efficiency of your data centre, reduce risk, and ensure 99.999% uptime, which in turn makes it more appealing to investors and tenants.
3. Ensuring accountability and transparency
Data centres have a range of different ownership types, which further complicates compliance reporting. With so many people involved in the design, construction, and ongoing operation of a data centre, it can be especially difficult to determine who is responsible for what, maintain accountability, and keep all data up to date.
Without clear ownership over certain metrics and assigned reporting duties, crucial data can fall between the cracks. For example, if everybody assumes someone else is reporting on emissions data or water usage, you run the risk of no one reporting on it.
This doesn’t just increase the risk of non-compliance: poor data hygiene and missing information leads to lost financial and improvement opportunities, while a lack of transparency can degrade investor trust.
How software revolutionises ESG reporting for data centres
Managing ESG data across a wide range of stakeholders and operational systems can quickly become overwhelming. Using a purpose-built ESG platform is essential for simplifying data collection, reporting, and performance analysis across complex portfolios, including data centres. A solution like Obi ESG can help owners and operators to centralise ESG data, streamline compliance reporting, enhance transparency, and drive continuous ESG improvements.
By centralising your ESG data in one place, it becomes much easier to meet compliance requirements, understand asset and portfolio performance, and make strategic improvements to your data centres’ sustainability efforts.
Here are four powerful ways that software addresses key ESG reporting and data challenges for data centres.
1. Get at-a-glance insights on ESG KPIs
Combine data from existing operational systems into one centralised dashboard to get a comprehensive view of your data centre’s performance. Quickly assess your compliance with key regulations, see how your assets are tracking against set goals to spot what’s on or off course, and identify where you need to make adjustments to meet your ESG commitments.
Monitor performance at both an asset and portfolio level to get a big-picture view of overall progress so you know where to invest your resources for the greatest ROI.
2. Enhance transparency and accountability
With the right ESG software, you can allocate reporting responsibilities to the appropriate parties, so everyone knows who’s accountable for what. This removes the uncertainty and ambiguity that often comes with data centre reporting, keeping all stakeholders engaged and informed.
It also increases transparency across the entire value chain, while simplifying processes for easier evidence collection, organisation, and validation. With a single digital platform, you can:
- See at a glance what evidence has been collected and what’s still outstanding
- Upload all evidence to one central platform for easy access and validation
- Create audit trails so you can see who did what, when
3. Understand how you measure up with benchmarks
Benchmarking your data centre against comparable assets lets you understand its attractiveness to investors and tenants, find opportunities to enhance performance and competitiveness, and increase your eligibility for sustainable funds.
Use ESG software with built-in benchmarking to understand how your asset is performing, both against regulations and compared to similar data centres. Some tools (like Obi ESG) even provide AI-powered analysis that deliver tailored recommendations about how to meet KPIs and improve process efficiency.
Compare your data centre’s decarbonisation pathway with sector- and country-specific pathways (such as CRREM or an equivalent) to identify assets at risk of stranding and take action.
4. Streamline and simplify reporting
With all of your ESG data in one platform, reporting and disclosure becomes significantly simpler. Manage your non-financial reporting requirements from one central place and export reports from your data in just a few clicks.
This makes it easier to demonstrate compliance with legislation like EU Taxonomy, so you can meet your obligations without needing hours of intensive research, analysis, and data compilation.
Leverage data and reporting best practices to improve your data centre’s ESG performance
Making data centres more sustainable is a complex process. Reliable data and accurate reporting is crucial to meeting your ESG goals, remaining compliant, and attracting investors and tenants. But the sheer amount of information required—across a multitude of supply chains and stakeholders—makes it almost impossible to do with manual spreadsheets.
Using a powerful built-for-purpose ESG reporting platform helps you to stay on top of the data and reporting required for compliance, transparency, and continuous improvement. With the right tool, you can build robust reporting practices, make data-driven decisions, and get the visibility, transparency, and accountability you need to get your data centre to net zero.
Want to learn how Catalyst can help transform your data centre? Get in touch.