New data center planned with the latest environmental standards
24.02.2023
In summer 2022, the Dutch company AkzoNobel announced that it would be closing the Schramm Coatings site on Kettelerstrasse by summer 2024. Lord Mayor and Head of Economic Affairs Dr. Felix Schwenke emphasizes: "From our point of view, the site closure is very bitter, especially for the employees affected, of course. In discussions with us, AkzoNobel has indicated that they would like to sell to a data center operator. As it is in the interests of the city to find a new use for the space quickly, we immediately began the necessary talks," said Schwenke. The American company CloudHQ is interested in purchasing the space - according to the company, there are exclusive agreements between the parties and it can be assumed that the talks will be concluded soon.
"Any space that can be put to economically viable use is important for everyone in Offenbach. In order to be able to realize the possible subsequent use quickly if the worst comes to the worst, Mayor and Head of the Environment Department Sabine Groß and Head of the Building and Planning Department Paul-Gerhard Weiß have already negotiated a letter of intent with CloudHQ on the conditions to be met," said Mayor Schwenke. "As a result, a data center that meets the latest environmental standards is to be built on the site. We have also coordinated our talks with Local Agenda 21. As part of the infrastructure in the age of digitalization, the data center would make both economic and ecological sense for the city," Schwenke continued.
In view of the plans, Mayor and Head of the Climate Department Sabine Groß emphasized: "The City of Offenbach has drawn up an environmental and climate protection catalog for the establishment of another large CloudHQ data center, the requirements of which we want to apply not only to this but also to all other new data centers that require a project-related building permit from the City of Offenbach." The requirements for the new data center are derived from a catalog that was drawn up with the involvement of Local Agenda 21 and were anchored in a letter of intent between CloudHQ and the City of Offenbach. The City Council approved the letter of intent at its most recent meeting and will now submit it to the City Council. The agreement forms the basis for the subsequent urban development contract to be concluded and a development plan to create the building rights on the part of the city.
Power supply from renewable energies and more green spaces
Mayor Groß explained the key points of the comprehensive paper: "The power supply for the new data center is to come from 100% renewable energy. In view of the dwindling water resources, a self-contained cooling system is planned. In addition, the installation of solar modules on the roof and extensive greening of the building as well as the creation of a surrounding green area around 15 meters deep were agreed. The latter takes into account the principle of the sponge city and prevents excessive heating in summer."
Paul-Gerhard Weiß, Head of Building and Planning, also explained that the existing woodland on the approximately 50,000 square meter site will be preserved and that more green space will be created in the adjoining residential area than currently exists. "Of course, the data center will be large, but with this additional distance to residential buildings, the quality of living will be maintained, which is of course important to me as head of the planning department," says Weiß. As things stand at present, the necessary emergency generators are to be powered by biodiesel. Until the project is realized, the parties involved have committed to following current technological developments, such as fuel cell technology, and to presenting a plan on how these sustainable technologies can be integrated into the project."
Waste heat is fed into the city's district heating network
"An important point in this declaration of intent for the city of Offenbach is the goal of using the waste heat generated by the data center," added Mayor Schwenke. "The company will make the waste heat available to Energieversorgung Offenbach, which will use it to generate sufficient temperatures for district heating with the help of heat pumps and use it for the city's district heating supply," said Schwenke. The details are to be regulated by a separate letter of intent between EVO AG and CloudHQ, which has also been agreed with the city.
"The project is thus making a contribution to energy security in Offenbach, as the use of waste heat will make us less dependent on other energy sources and fossil fuels such as gas. This is an investment in the future of our city," Schwenke made clear. He recalled that the city's ability to influence CloudHQ's first data center was still very limited: "The project there was built on the basis of an existing building law, so that further environmental and climate protection aspects, which are important to the city, could not be made a prerequisite for planning permission at the time. This is now completely different with this project. With our environmental and climate protection catalog, we have established uniform requirements for this data center that are important to the city and that will be made a prerequisite if the city has to create a building permit. The city also intends to use this catalog for other future data centers. We are therefore not waiting for the announced legislative initiatives at federal level, but are already making progress in Offenbach on the topic of sustainability."
Investment in infrastructure for digitalization
CloudHQ Managing Director Peter Knapp welcomed the close cooperation with the city: "The preparations for our project are being carried out in close coordination with the Lord Mayor and the offices involved. With this second major project, we want to make a contribution to further strengthening Offenbach as a business and digital location by providing the necessary infrastructure for the advancing digitalization in Germany. At the same time, with the declaration of intent between our company and the City of Offenbach, we have taken an important step towards realizing a project that will set new standards in climate and environmental protection in the data center sector."
LEED Gold Standard certification
"The agreement that has now been concluded also states that the data center meets all LEED Gold certification standards," said Mayor Groß, highlighting another of the numerous details agreed. LEED stands for "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" and is an internationally recognized certification system for ecological construction, which takes into account numerous criteria such as the use of recyclable materials and high energy efficiency. Today's data centers generally strive for certification according to the silver standard - the gold standard is the second highest of four assessment levels of this certification after platinum.
Finally, Schwenke returned to the AkzoNobel employees: "We know from Biospring that they are interested in receiving applications from employees. Biospring is also looking for employees with a wide range of qualifications, explicitly not just highly qualified people."
About CloudHQ:
CloudHQ is a leading, private operator of data centers whose technical design is individually tailored to the needs of leading companies in the digital economy. The buildings and commercial space specially developed for this use are leased to well-known companies, which operate their servers here in order to securely handle their business-critical processes - from cloud infrastructure to storage and data processing.
