Unearthing the plan to take the EU’s data centre economy full circle

Unearthing the plan to take the EU's data centre economy full circle

Deborah Andrews, lead partner of CEDaCI and associate professor of design at LSBU, unpacks the project aiming to develop a robust, secure and economically viable supply chain for data centre equipment. 

Deborah Andrews, associate professor of design at London South Bank University’s (LSBU) School of Engineering is one of a number of experts calling for the application of circular economy principles to the data centre to mitigate this mounting pile of material.  “The focus was a lifecycle / environmental impact assessment of the buildings and IT equipment and focussed on embodied impacts rather than energy consumption and operational impacts. The subject was really interesting and innovative, and, until then, there was very little research in this area.”

The main focus is the reclamation of critical raw materials, those materials – the batteries, cables, hard drives and servers – that the data centre cannot function without. Deborah and the CEDaCI team will endeavour to feed these essential ingredients back into a closed loop into the manufacture of new equipment.