Microsoft’s Cloud Gets Even Greener in Ireland

By Kevin Timmons,
General Manager of Datacenter Services

I’m pleased to announce that we are continuing with our strong global environmental sustainability efforts in our cloud infrastructure by signing a contract to purchase renewable wind power from a local Irish energy provider for our Dublin datacenter.  

Main entrance to Microsoft’s Dublin Datacenter 

In addition to utilizing this new source of energy, our Dublin datacenter incorporates a free air cooling design which provides a dramatic reduction in power consumption. The removal of traditional datacenter cooling systems, used in the industry today, also negates the need for a chiller plant, allowing us to avoid the consumption of around 18 million liters of water each month that a traditional datacenter of its size would typically use. 

Our approach to environmental sustainability in Dublin is just one more example of our overall holistic approach to designing and building datacenters around the world.  Our strategy focuses on innovating locally and designing facilities that take advantage of the region’s natural environmental benefits where possible.

Our team is continuing to evolve our modular building strategies for even more energy efficiency and we will continue to share our best practices with others in the industry.

//Kev