What is claimed to be the second largest data center in the world, Quality Technology Services’ (QTS) Atlanta Metro facility, has achieved LEED Gold Certification for excellence in energy efficiency and environmentally friendly design.

The data center is the third in a string of large data center LEED announcements to come from the last week, including LEED Silver certification for Yahoo!’s data center in Nebraska and LEED Gold for Facebook’s phase 1 Prineville facility. What makes QTS’s qualification different is that it is a multitenant facility used for colocation and the delivery of cloud computing services, where client concerns for uptime often reduce the amount of innovation that can be used for green initiatives.

QTS CTO Brian Johnston said QTS had implemented several “green” processes since purchasing and upgrading the 990,000sq ft data center in 2007. “Achieving LEED Gold in a large, multi-tenant environment is extremely challenging, and everybody at QTS is justifiably proud of this achievement,” Johnston said.

QTS had devoted 4.5 acres of its roof for rain water capture for cooling the data center, and managed to improve its PUE since 2010 by 11.4%. It also worked with the US Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) Climate Corps Program which placed specially trained MBA and MPA students into the organization to help identify areas where efficiency could be further improved.

“As we implement our EDF fellow’s recommendations through a US$10m multi-year investment, we strive to be not only good stewards of resources but pass cost savings through to our customers who have an interest in going green,” Johnston said.

The data center construction work has all be carried out with the design build team JE Dunn Construction, AECOM and Gibbens Drake Scott. The Atlanta Metro data center has its own on-site power substation provided by Georgia Power. You can see more about the data center in a video tour below. More about QTS' Atlanta Metro facility Related Stories Irene causes no downtime for major data center providers QTS and DRT expand Silicon Valley data center inventories QTS introduces new ways of buying power