QTS (Quality Technology Services) has announced a series of energy efficiency investments and successes, including achieving Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification for its Atlanta Metro facility—the world’s second largest data center.

Developed by the US Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED is an internationally-recognized green building certification system. QTS’ innovative features and commitment to reducing energy costs were rated highly by LEED professionals.

“We understand the difficulty in achieving LEED in a multi-tenant data center where individual tenant agreements require specific temperature and humidity guidelines,” said Rick Fedrizzi, president, chief operating officer, and founding chair—US Green Building Council. “The engineering and data center operation teams at QTS' Atlanta Metro Data Center are to be commended for achieving LEED Gold, which certifies this building to be among the world’s greenest high-performance buildings.” 

Since purchasing and upgrading the 990,000-sq-ft Atlanta Metro Data Center in 2007, QTS has implemented several green processes, such as devoting 4.5 acres of roof space for rain water capture to support the cooling infrastructure. Further, since January 2010, QTS has improved the power usage effectiveness (PUE) at Atlanta Metro by 11.4 percent, resulting in significant power cost savings that the company is able to pass through to its customers.

This past summer, the company engaged the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Climate Corps Program, a summer fellowship program that places specially-trained MBA and MPA students in organizations to help drive energy efficiency, to further reduce QTS’ carbon footprint. EDF Climate Corps fellow, Sukrit Sehgal (William and Mary College of Business, MBA ’12) worked with the company’s data center operations and engineering teams to identify more than $4 million in potential annual energy efficiency cost savings at Atlanta Metro.  As a result, the company plans to make a $10 million multi-year investment to implement Sehgal’s recommendations across the company’s portfolio.   QTS and Sehgal’s work are featured in an EDF-produced video released this week that can be seen here.

“Achieving LEED Gold in a large, multi-tenant environment is extremely challenging, and everybody at QTS is justifiably proud of this achievement. We also appreciate the contribution our design build team of JE Dunn Construction, AECOM, and Gibbens Drake Scott, Inc. in obtaining this certification,” said Brian Johnston, chief technology officer – QTS. “As we implement our EDF fellow’s recommendations through a $10 million multi-year investment, we strive to be not only good stewards of resources, but pass cost savings through to our customers who have an interest in going green. Our entire company continues to focus on a team approach to obtain greater efficiencies, and we expect these improvements to continue. “