Pioneers in sustainability: dataR and ENGIE Deutschland achieve "Blue Angel" certification

Cologne - Energy and resource efficiency will play a decisive role in the data center of the future. At dataR, both are already becoming reality today at a level that sets standards: ENGIE Deutschland is developing and building a data center with a connected load of six megawatts in Rellingen in the north of Hamburg together with its partner Kähler Bau. The data center meets demanding requirements in terms of operational reliability, efficiency and sustainability. After completion in March 2026, the data center will be certified by TÜV SÜD according to availability class VK-3 in accordance with the European standard for data centers DIN EN 50600. The building will also be awarded the eco-label “Blauer Engel DE ZU-228", which is awarded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment for particularly environmentally friendly products and services. Andreas Janker, Managing Director at dataR, said at the ground-breaking ceremony on Thursday, 7 March 2024: "We are proud that dataR is building one of the most energy-efficient data centers in Germany. With ENGIE Deutschland, we have exactly the right partner at our side to achieve a new level of efficiency and sustainability in our sensitive digital infrastructure."

dataR and ENGIE on the road to climate neutrality

The dataR data center covers a total of 8,200 square meters. Of this 2,500 square meters is the white space with 25 rooms in which servers, switches and data storage are housed. The remaining space is divided into the grey space with the cooling systems, systems for the uninterruptible power supply and other operating equipment, as well as the offices. The highly complex technical equipment, which ENGIE Deutschland designed and whose installation the on-site team will coordinate and supervise during the entire construction phase, includes a redundant emergency power supply (three systems of 3,500 kilovolt amperes each), water-cooled chillers with the natural refrigerant ammonia and with free cooling (six systems of 850 kilowatts each) and dry cooling units (four systems of two megawatts each). This makes it the first data center in Germany to use a natural refrigerant (Global Warming Potential (GWP) = 0) to this extent. Another special feature is the use of waste heat on site: the data center will provide several megawatts of waste heat, which can be used to supply heat to the surrounding buildings. Maximilian Busch, Head of Sales & Engineering in the Building Technologies business unit and responsible for the project at ENGIE Deutschland, says: "Data centers in Europe are facing the challenging task of becoming climate-neutral by 2030. Our project with dataR shows that the climate-neutral data center is absolutely possible for any size of data center, even under complex conditions - and thus sets an example for the industry."

Joyful ground-breaking ceremony for the currently most energy-efficient co-location data center in Germany (as of February 2024): Michael Beyer, ENGIE Deutschland, Lorenz Kähler, Kähler Bau, Martin Bosner, dataR, Patrick Brinker, HAL Privatbank, Andreas Janker, dataR, Sören Meyer, PunktEins, and Marc Trampe, Mayor of the municipality of Rellingen (from left)