Circle Reading: where clinical practicality meets build efficiency

The wish to meet BREEAM standards used to lead to the design of expensive bolt-ons, like additional photovoltaic panels or biomass, just to get those precious credits.

When looking at the vast scale of a project like Hinkley Point, at its enormous costs and lengthy timescales, it’s clear to see what the problems are.We need a solution that’s much faster, more scalable and deployable, and we need it right away.

Hinkley Point is still a number of years off completion..Achieving net zero by 2050.It’s also important to remember that the challenge of turning the climate crisis around rests solely on the shoulders of our working generation.

Although future timescales can sometimes feel abstract, 2050 really isn’t far away and our net zero deadline is looming.In fact, half of the emissions in the atmosphere today were emitted in the last thirty years, so we’re going to have to think really expansively on the issue.

One of the greatest challenges we have is finance, because there’s still a lot of prejudice against nuclear power in the finance market.

The World Bank, for example, won’t finance nuclear projects.The biggest environmental impact of data centres is in their use of power and water for cooling, but they are also heavy in terms of embedded carbon.

Carbon is embedded in the structure of buildings as everyone knows, but in data centres significantly more so in the M&E equipment within them.As we optimise the geometry and layout of the structure, plant and systems we can have a positive effect on the amount of embodied carbon in the building, structure and systems.. Our more sustainable approach to close coupling and integration increases efficiency in cooling and distribution losses and also lessens the carbon intensive materials used in these systems.. Our industrialisation and digital design approach allows us to quantify this carbon content during design, and minimise the content through optimisation and materials selection.

It means our clients can make arrangements for carbon offsetting prior to the data centre facility being handed over.. We continue to investigate and take opportunities to make use of the heat that is generated by the cooling of data centres.with provision for heat export suitable for connection to district heating or industrial processes where viable.. We are also working with data centre clients on alternative sources of clean energy; an area where we see significant potential for data centres to become autonomous, and to promote the use of cleaner standby power systems.. A positive future for data centre design.