(Credit: Vantage Data Centers)Vantage Data Centers has secured a $300 million green loan to go toward a planned sustainability-designed data center in Virginia.
The 44-megawatt facility is currently being developed at Vantage’s campus in Loudoun County, Virginia, and is scheduled to open later in 2022. The campus features efficient cooling and uses minimal water, outdoor lights powered by solar and wind energy sources, solar-powered electric vehicle charging stations, and sustainable landscaping.
In order to qualify for a green loan, recipients must generally meet the criteria for sustainability measures, such as efforts on energy efficiency, water conservation, and carbon emissions. Data centers are often the target of these types of projects because they typically use a large amount of energy and water.
"As our understanding of sustainability continues to mature, we are able to broaden the definition past merely considering energy efficiency, renewable energy, and water conservation for our facilities and projects,” says Amanda Sutton, Vantage’s senior director of sustainability. “Considerations about how our facilities interact in the broader ecosystem of a community become integrated into how we design and build each data center campus to deliver sustainable outcomes that are both intentional and impactful."
The Department of Energy says data centers account for nearly 2% of the electricity use in the US, and can use up to 50 times more energy than typical office spaces. Those sustainability concerns in the facilities have also helped grow the green data center market, which is expected to be valued at $145 billion by 2028, according to Verified Market Research.
Green debt also saw record numbers in 2021, registering at more than $1.6 trillion. Sustainability financing, though, has leveled off this year, and saw its first year-over-year decline since records began, according to Refinitiv.
Despite those numbers, digital infrastructure company Equinix issued $1.2 billion in green bonds earlier this year that is going toward projects such as using fuel cells at data centers. Vantage also previously obtained a $68 million green loan to fund the development of a 32 MW facility at its Quebec City campus.
Both Vantage loans were structured and financed by European investment bank Societe Generale. The Virginia project will be the third data center located on the 42-acre campus with a capacity of 146 MW.
