Colt DCS Reports 27% Emissions Reduction and 100% Renewable Electricity in 2025

Colt Data Centre Services has published its fourth annual Sustainability Report revealing a 27 percent reduction in combined Scope 1, 2 market-based and 3 greenhouse gas emissions compared to the 2019 base year, alongside achievement of 100 percent renewable electricity in Scope 2 through renewable energy certificates and a 90 percent renewable share of total energy consumption across all three scopes. The report also documents the advancement of Colt DCS's Global Reference Design, a standardised architectural blueprint embedding energy-efficient systems, lower embodied carbon materials and near-zero wastewater cooling technologies into all new data centre developments, targeting an annualised power usage effectiveness below 1.2 and waste diversion rates of 75 percent in construction and 90 percent in operations. Anthea van Scherpenzeel, Head of Environmental Sustainability at Colt DCS, said the company is proud of progress made in reducing absolute emissions in 2025 as it advances toward its 2045 net zero target, noting that whole life carbon assessments are helping customers and partners identify key sources of value chain emissions and understand the impact of design and procurement decisions.

 

The Global Reference Design and Cooling Technology Innovation

 

The Global Reference Design represents a significant operational commitment to embedding sustainability at the architectural stage rather than retrofitting environmental improvements into completed facilities, ensuring that every new data centre development incorporates the same core sustainability principles regardless of geographic location or local regulatory context. The GRD's incorporation of chilled water systems using low global warming potential refrigerants with near-zero water consumption addresses one of the most commercially sensitive sustainability challenges facing data centre operators, where conventional evaporative cooling systems create substantial water demand in regions where water scarcity is a growing concern. Closed-loop liquid cooling systems that circulate coolant in a sealed loop and transfer heat without relying on evaporation provide both the water efficiency and the cooling density needed for high-performance AI workloads, where conventional air cooling is increasingly inadequate for the thermal management requirements of dense GPU accelerator deployments.

Dina Nassar, Sustainability Analyst at Colt DCS, said the growth of AI introduces new efficiency challenges for data centre operators globally and that the revised GRD underpins the efficiency gains made in 2025 by ensuring lower embodied carbon materials and advanced cooling technologies are embedded at the design stage rather than added as afterthoughts. The repeatable and standardised nature of the GRD, with flexibility to adapt to local requirements while maintaining consistency in core principles, provides the scalability needed to apply the same sustainability standards across Colt DCS's global development pipeline without the cost and timeline inefficiency of custom design for each new facility. The rainwater harvesting capability for non-potable indoor use incorporated in the GRD adds a further water stewardship dimension alongside the near-zero water consumption cooling approach, addressing water use across different facility functions with complementary technological solutions.

 

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Operational Performance and Certification Achievements

 

The global power usage effectiveness of 1.41 achieved in 2025 represents meaningful operational efficiency progress for a hyperscale data centre operator, reflecting the energy management discipline and infrastructure investment needed to reduce the ratio of total facility power consumption to IT equipment power consumption across a diverse portfolio of legacy and new-build sites. The TRUE Zero Waste certification achieved across three sites, including London North, Tokyo Inzai 1-3 and Osaka Keihanna, demonstrates that waste diversion performance meeting the 90 percent or above threshold required for TRUE certification is achievable at data centre scale across multiple geographic markets. The ISO 27001 Information Security Management System certification achieved globally and ISO 14001 Environmental Management System certification across the UK and Europe provide independent third-party validation of the governance frameworks underpinning Colt DCS's sustainability and security performance claims.

The Great Place To Work certification with 92 percent of employees recommending Colt DCS as a top employer, up from 87 percent in 2024, demonstrates that the company's sustainability commitments extend to the social dimension of ESG through workforce development and employment quality alongside the environmental performance metrics. The Best Talent Developer of the Year recognition at the Data Centre World Awards reinforces the human capital investment narrative in a sector where competition for the engineering and technical talent needed to design, build and operate increasingly sophisticated AI-ready infrastructure is intensifying.

 

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Outlook for Colt DCS's 2045 Net Zero Trajectory

 

The 27 percent combined scope emissions reduction against the 2019 baseline provides a strong mid-decade performance marker for Colt DCS's progress toward its 2045 net zero target, though the pace of absolute emissions reduction required to maintain this trajectory will intensify as the company's capacity expansion to serve growing AI workload demand potentially adds new emissions sources that efficiency improvements must outpace. Whether Colt DCS can sustain absolute emissions reductions while expanding its global data centre footprint at the pace required by AI infrastructure demand will be the central sustainability execution challenge of the next phase of the company's development, requiring continued advancement of the Global Reference Design and deeper supplier engagement to reduce embodied carbon in materials procurement. Sustained progress on both the environmental and social dimensions of the sustainability report, combined with the SBTi-aligned targets referenced by van Scherpenzeel, would establish Colt DCS as a leading reference for sustainable hyperscale data centre operation in a sector facing growing scrutiny over its environmental footprint.

 

Source: PRNewswire