Digital Realty’s Singapore facility has received a Green Mark Platinum certification from the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA). This was achieved under the “existing data center” category, a first for a data center in Singapore.

The BCA-IDA Green Mark for Data Centres is a green building rating system created specifically for data centers, and must be renewed every three years. It is designed to give recognition to data centers that adopt energy efficient designs, operations and management.

A Green Mark Rating is awarded based on a Green Mark Score that is calculated based on a pre-set list of attributes. A score of above 50 out of 100 is required to qualify for the lowest “Certified” ranking.  The ranking ranges from the basic Green Mark Certified, to the Green Mark Gold, Green Mark Gold Plus and the Green Mark Platinum. The Green Mark Platinum is the highest possible ranking, and requires data centers to obtain a score of over 90.

Green buildings

Another recent data center that was accredited under the BCA-IDA Green Mark for Data Centres scheme was Pacnet’s CloudSpace II (SGCS2) data center in Singapore–the Singapore and Hong Kong-based company was recently acquired by Telstra for $700M. The eight-story, 155,000 sq ft data center located in Paya Lebar attained a GoldPLUS rating in mid-2014 under the new data center category.

 “This Platinum certification verifies the energy efficient design and environmental performance of our Singapore data center,” said Bernard Geoghegan, the managing director, EMEA and Asia Pacific at Digital Realty in a statement.

“Most organizations today want to do business sustainably and reduce their carbon footprint hence we aim to deliver the most energy-efficient data centers for our clients, to help them turn their data center needs into a strategic business advantage,” he said.

Digital Realty’s Singapore data center is a 370,500 square feet facility delivering 30MW of critical IT capacity. In operation since 2010, it was previously certified as Gold under the Green Mark for Buildings scheme.

For more on energy efficiency in Singapore, read our interview with Ed Ansett of i3 Solutions Group.