https://146a55aca6f00848c565-a7635525d40ac1c70300198708936b4e.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/images/f5c2c6b0cb8a18890b6012b3ce6c35226cefa08b.png logo
Project Leads
Alexander Rakow, Eric Dahlen

Steering Committee Representative: Shruti Sethi (Microsoft)

Scope

Mission:

Data center industry is moving towards net carbon zero goals over coming decade. OCP Sustainability Project is working to enable progress towards industry goals by addressing unique challenges and opportunities presented within Open Compute Project ecosystem. The Sustainability project led the introduction of Sustainability as the 5th tenet into OCP. Leveraging the expertise of the OCP community, we offer an open framework and resources for OCP members and data center industry – vendors, suppliers, and end users - to deploy industry best practices that promotes reusability and circularity.  

Goals:

  1. Identify key steps in system and component design that require reimagination to promote reusability and circularity

  2. Deliver roadmap to increase standardization of calculation, measurement, and disclosure of metrics across the IT product and data center life cycle

  3. Publish (how-to) guidelines to offer frameworks for a supply-side resource consumption and implications on our common value chain 

  4. Develop OCP-certified design and sourcing practices and creating circular operating modes 

 

Carbon Accounting for Circularity

Carbon Accounting for Circularity Mailing List

Carbon Modeling Workstream

Mission: This workstream focuses on embodied carbon, which is the CO2e emitted by the manufacture of the physical entities within a data center.  Embodied carbon cannot be directly measured, rather it is modeled, and thus this workstream is named OCP Sustainability Carbon Modeling.

This workstream was created to address the following challenges:

  • Data Access: How to obtain best estimates of embodied CO2e values from the supply chain and researchers.
  • Data Opacity: How to understand the various methods that were utilized to estimate embodied CO2e at all steps along the supply chain.
  • Data Grade: How to summarize the quality and completeness of the embodied CO2e estimates.

Carbon Modeling Mailing List

Circularity and Lifecycle Extension Workstream

Mission: The primary mission of this workstream is to identify industry best practices that can be shared across vendors, suppliers as well as end user behavior that promotes re-usability and circularity.  With a focus to understand and explain circularity from technical and operational point of view, the workstream is investigating key elements in system and component design, and how to design with reusability in mind.

Circularity and Lifecycle Extension Mailing List

Data Center Efficiency Metrics (DCEM) Workstream

Mission: To define data center infrastructure efficiency metrics, measurement and disclosure requirements, and measurement mechanisms. Partner with SW developers and DC operators to create eco-system to broadly support sustainability metrics via standard based mechanism.

Data Center Efficiency Metrics Mailing List

Carbon Disclosure / Label Standardization Workstream

The iMasons Climate Accord (iCA) and the Open Compute Project (OCP) have started an exciting journey in our joint effort to address the crucial issue of embodied carbon and its impact on data center sustainability. Both the iCA and OCP communities welcome your participation in a new Carbon Disclosure/Label Standardization Workstream.

Scope 3 emissions, specifically embodied carbon in materials and equipment, pose a significant challenge to data center operators striving to achieve net-zero and carbon neutrality goals. As we recognize the urgency to reduce the carbon footprint of data centers, it is essential to engage our vast supply chain in measuring, reporting, and drawing down embodied carbon from data center inputs.

The primary objective of our workstream is to develop a standardized framework for disclosing and managing embodied carbon in data center construction and operation. By establishing a clear and consistent approach, iCA and OCP aim to drive industry-wide collaboration and innovation, enabling data center operators to make informed decisions and take effective actions to reduce their environmental impact.

Embodied Carbon Mailing List

Metrics and Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) Workstream

Mission: To identify methods for assessing & reporting environmental impact associated with the key stages of the life cycle of a certified open compute project components, systems and devices, and data center facilities. The goal is to publish metrics and the methodology that are relevant for OCP community to improve design, development and deployment of sustainable data center infrastructure that strives to reduce carbon footprint with every new generation.

Sustainability Metrics-LCA Mailing List

Power Telemetry

Power Telemetry Mailing List

Call Calendar

These meetings are recorded via audio and video. By participating you consent that these recordings may be made publicly available. Any presentation materials, proposals and meeting minutes are published on the respective project's wiki page and are open to the public in accordance to OCP's Bylaws and IP Policy. This can be found at https://www.opencompute.org/about/ocp-policies/. If you have any questions please contact OCP.

OCP Sustainability Initiative Calendar

The calendar displayed here is updated nightly from the project's Groups.io Calendar