“Say what you like, but don’t call it greenwash”. That’s what a data center CEO said to me at the Datacenter Dynamics Focus event in London, when I questioned his claim to offer a PUE of 1.0.

The CEO, Nick Razey of Next Generation Data (NGD), seemed surprised at the criticism. But he had just claimed the impossible, and commentators and analysts were taking him to task. But he seemed especially stung by that word “greenwash”.

Based in Newport, Wales, NGD is an impeccably green data center, but it just offered a contractual guarantee of a PUE (power usage effectiveness) of 1.0.

Did NGD really say it?

Before we ran the story here, we checked NGD had really said it. Sure enough, the press release is here, offering “contractual power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratios of just 1.0 – the most energy efficient rating on the globally recognised scale prescribed by the Green Grid.”

NGD’s CEO Nick Razey describes this as a “world first”. That’s true enough. A PUE of 1.0 would be a unique achievement, because strictly speaking, it’s impossible.

PUE is defined as the total power used by a facility, divided by the power used in the IT equipment. A PUE of 1 would mean that no power was being used in any other part of the building outside the IT racks, including chillers, lighting and air conditioning.

That is never going to happen. Strenuous effort has got PUEs down from an industry average of more than 2 (where more power is wasted than reaches the IT kit) down to around 1.1, where only a fraction is lost, but perfect PUE is just not a physical possibility.

So why is NGD promising it - and offering it with a contractual guarantee?

NGD is a giant data center, with access to hydroelectric power. It’s been using only renewable energy since 2010, and it’s the first UK data center to sign up for the Climate Change Agreement (CCA) - a tax break for colos who promise to cut their PUE.

With 750,000 square feet NGD has a huge and beautiful building - originally intended as a semiconductor plant for LG, but abandoned in the 1990s. It’s got a big flat roof, and Razey put a 4000 panel solar farm roof there. It’s a sensible move as the array can create “up to a million kWh a year”. Feeding that into the grid, it will pay for itself, thanks to the “feed in tariff”.

The firm is also upgrading its cooling system with a Stulz GE system that intelligently picks the cooling mode to make the most of outside air cooling.

Now, NGD has a big solar array, but it’s not enough to power the data center. Amazon’s James Hamilton reckons that it would take (in North Carolina) about 362 square feet of solar array to power one square foot of data center space.

Apparently NGD is generating enough solar electricity to offset the cost of its cooling systems. The company says that effectively counts as a PUE of 1.0, but really it doesn’t.

Andy Lawrence, vice president of data center research at 451 Research, said the claim would be met with “derision”. Ian Bitterlin of Emerson Network Power described it as “PUE abuse”. Analyst Clive Longbottom of Quocirca said it was “PUE-phooey” and used that word that so upset Razey - “greenwash”.

Washing greener?

If we’re being pedantic, maybe it’s not. “Greenwash” is a spurious green marketing campaign, that normally spends more money on advertising than on any green technology. It’s an unfashionable term, since most companies just don’t have the budget for old-fashioned greenwash any more.

Amazon’s decision to go to 100 percent renewable energy isn’t greenwash. Its promise to heat a building with waste data center heat might be, if the scheme doesn’t make any real energy savings.

NGD, on the other hand, has invested real money in an initiative to generate renewable power. Where things went wrong was seizing on PUE (and appearing to claim endorsement by the Green Grid) as a way to tell the world about it.

It’s possible that NGD thought any publicity would be good. Or that the PUE term is now so abused in the market - and so divorced from the real issues of data center owners and customers - that making a false claim wouldn’t matter.

It’s tempting to suggest that potential customers should pile into NGD’s center, and then sue for their money back over a claim which is demonstrably false. That would be bad for the industry - and in any case, I’m sure the small print of NGD’s contracts makes it clear that “contractual PUE” doesn’t quite match the official standard definition.

Razey tells me he’s got an actual PUE of 1.18. In a sane data center world, he’d be able to shout about that, and then take kudos for adding more green generation capacity on top. 

A version of this article appeared on Green Data Center News.