Sustainability Spotlight: Toronto

Bob Benvignati, Senior Sales Engineer, Digital Realty
March 27, 2023

Sustainability is no longer a vague futuristic concept.
In fact, IDC predicts that by 2024, “80% of G2000 companies will capture their carbon data and report their enterprise-wide carbon footprint using quantifiable metrics, compared with 50% today.” Additionally, “environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance will be viewed as a top 3 decision factor for IT equipment purchases by 2026.”* How prepared is your organization to manage these essential factors?

A purpose-built, sustainable Canada data center.
As the demand for data continually rises and data centers are among the world’s biggest power consumers, sustainability is a primary characteristic of the modern data center. Our 1 Century Place data center in Toronto was purpose-built to be one of Digital Realty’s most sustainable data centers, and we have partnered with Schneider Electric to actively manage the facility’s environmental impact. Formerly a printing plant for the historic Toronto Star newspaper, Digital Realty reused many original building components, eliminating the need for tons of new steel and concrete. 1 Century Place spans over 66,000 square meters (711,000 square feet) with a critical power capacity of up to 54 megawatts, extensive security measures, and is SOC 2 and 3, PCI-DSS, and ISO 27001 compliant. Ninety-three percent (93%) of the electricity used in the data center is emission-free, and the data center even achieved LEED Silver certification for sustainable design and construction.

Leading the green energy data center industry in sustainable environmental performance.
In 2021, we became the first data center operator to reach one gigawatt of IT capacity certified under sustainable building standards, more than any other data center developer. We were the only data center provider to receive the 2021 EPA ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year, Sustained Excellence, and the 2021 Green Lease Leader, Platinum Award. Our commitment continues to garner recognition and awards, such as Newsweek’s Most Responsible Companies 2022, JUST Capital’s America’s Most JUST Companies 2022 – Top 100, and EPA Green Power Partnership’s Top 10 Tech and Telecom List, to name a few. Along with using Schneider Electric’s PME software down to the individual customers’ suites, we even exceeded our goal of a 10% reduction in Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) in 2022. The right partner can make a difference, and we are proud of how our collaboration with Schneider Electric is helping empower sustainability for all.

Go Green and Go Global with PlatformDIGITAL^®, our global data center and connectivity platform. By leveraging PlatformDIGITAL, top international brands can:

• Optimize network performance
• Enhance security and infrastructure management
• Deploy, connect, and host critical data infrastructure

Your data is now critical to your success. Regardless of where you are in your digital transformation journey, now is the time to focus on how you contribute to sustainability efforts.
Watch this video to learn more about 1 Century Place and its’ sustainability features.

Explore Toronto
You can find more information about our global sustainability commitments in our annual corporate sustainability report.

*Stengel, B. (2022, December 5). IDC futurescape: WW Sustainability/ESG 2023 predictions. IDC Blog. Retrieved from blogs.idc.com