Schneider Electric has introduced new model-based, automated sustainability reporting features within its award-winning EcoStruxure IT data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) software. The release follows three years of strategic investment, and rigorous testing and development as part of Schneider Electric’s Green IT programme.
Available to all EcoStruxure IT users starting in April, the new and enhanced reporting features combine 20 years of sustainability, regulatory, data centre and software development expertise with advanced machine learning. Customers will have access to a new set of reporting capabilities, which traditionally required a deep understanding of manual data calculation methods.
Unlike anything available in the market, the new model offers customers a fast, intuitive and simple-to-use reporting engine to help meet imminent regulatory requirements such as the European Energy Efficiency Directive (EED). In fact, the new capabilities go far beyond the EED-required metrics, ensuring customers can measure their data centres’ real-time and historical energy performance data against all of the advanced reporting metrics specified within Schneider Electric’s White Paper 67.
EcoStruxure IT software enables owners and operators to measure and report data centre performance based on historical data and trends analysis, combining it with artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time monitoring to turn it into actionable insights for improved sustainability. With the new download function, organisations can quickly quantify and report at the click of a button, removing laborious manual tasks and making it faster and easier to harness the power of data, to reduce the environmental impact of their data centres.
“At Schneider Electric, we recognise that sustainability is a journey, and for the last three years we have increased our investment to develop new software features that make it faster and simpler for our customers to operate resilient, secure, and sustainable IT infrastructure,” said senior vice president of EcoStruxure IT, Kevin Brown. “The new reporting capabilities included with EcoStruxure IT have been tested and adopted by our own organisation, and will allow customers to turn complex data into meaningful information and report on key sustainability metrics.”
A new era for Green IT
In 2021, Schneider Electric released its Schneider Sustainability Impact (SSI) report publicising the company’s sustainability commitments. Aligning with the SSI purpose, Schneider Electric’s CIO, Elizabeth Hackenson kickstarted the company’s Green IT programme. This is a sustainable enterprise IT initiative to identify new and intelligent decarbonisation pathways to help the programme achieve its objective of at least a 5% annual IT emissions reduction.
As part of the programme, Schneider Electric utilised its EcoStruxure IT software, which was deployed across more than 140 key sites globally to improve resiliency and security of its IT operations. Through Green IT, it became apparent that new capabilities within EcoStruxure IT could also be leveraged for greater sustainability, allowing Schneider Electric to improve the visibility of its IT energy consumption dramatically. By utilising the insights from EcoStruxure IT, it was able to witness a 30% energy consumption reduction in H2 of 2023 versus H1 of 2023 in its smart factory in Lexington, Kentucky.
During the process, Schneider Electric also utilised the key learnings and insights from its data to accelerate the development of the new EcoStruxure IT reporting features.
“When seeking to reduce IT and data centre energy consumption and CO2 emissions, organisations must establish a fact-based baseline, and access to real-time and historical data is vital,” said Hackenson. “Through the use of EcoStruxure IT, we have continued to make significant progress in our mission to reduce our IT energy consumption and environmental impact, and to help the company progress its sustainability objectives. Today, we are making those benefits readily available to customers globally.”
As more companies prepare for regulations such as the EU Energy Efficiency Directive, which mandated the reporting of IT and data centre energy consumption from May 2024, the significance of accessing real-time, primary data becomes even more critical. Through the launch of the new AI-driven dashboard and reporting capabilities in EcoStruxure IT across international regions, customers can quickly leverage their data to comply with the new regulatory requirements.
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