Equinix, Inc .has been awarded the LEED Green Building Rating System Gold Certification for its high building standards by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for phase one of its SY3 facility located in Mascot, Sydney.
Phase one of Equinix’s third Sydney International Business Exchange data center, known as SY3, was completed in 2011 and was built to LEED standards. Phase two of the building project will be completed in Q3 2012 and has been built to the same standards as phase one. Work will then start on phase three of the project.
“This award acts as a testament to the ongoing commitment from Equinix to build to the highest standards and strengthens its position as a global leader in the data center industry,” said Tony Simonsen, managing director of Equinix Australia. “Our aim is to continue to raise these standards, ensuring we are as efficient and green as possible while keeping our customers’ energy consumption and costs down.”
Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO and founding chair, USGBC, said, “With each new LEED-certified building, we get one step closer to USGBC’s vision of a sustainable built environment within a generation. As the newest member of the LEED family of green buildings, SY3 is an important addition to the growing strength of the green building movement.”
SY3 phase one is the result of a US$65M (approximately AUD$62.4M) investment and provides the equivalent of 1,000 cabinets of capacity, expanding to 3,000 with the rollout of subsequent phases. It confirms Equinix Australia’s ability to meet the high demand for premium colocation and interconnection data center services.
Specific achievements highlighted as part of the LEED Certification include:
• One hundred percent reduction of potable water for sewage conveyance through the capture and reuse of rainwater ― meeting USGBC’s exemplary performance requirement
• Seventy-eight 78 percent of on-site generated construction waste diverted from landfill
• Use of up to 98 percent of the building’s existing structural elements (walls, floors, and roofs) — the LEED Gold Certification required a minimum of 55 percent of elements be reused
• Overall energy cost savings of 22.24 percent
“The SY3 building was originally designed by famed architect Harry Seidler and used as a government paper store. It’s an interesting evolution that this building has moved from storing huge amounts of paper in archive boxes to data now stored in racks of servers,” added Simonsen.
At the time the building was completed, Equinix also announced that its facilities in Sydney, comprising SY1, SY2 and SY3, had successfully passed the external audit for ISO 27001, the highest global standard for information security.
