The most sustainable site for a data center may be one that's already been used. Instead of paving farmland or clearing habitat, brownfield redevelopment takes contaminated, underused industrial land and gives it a productive second life — often improving the environment in the process. It's the model behind A1 Data Center's Millville campus, which is reclaiming a former glass manufacturing facility: reusing existing structures and power infrastructure, remediating contaminat

A data center produces heat. For decades that heat was simply rejected into the air wasted. A growing movement is changing that, turning a byproduct into a community resource. Through district energy networks, the warm water a facility generates can be captured and piped to heat nearby homes, greenhouses, and businesses. Industry analysts describe waste-heat recovery as a credible way to reframe data centers as community-aligned infrastructure that strengthens local energy ef

Data centers built a reputation for draining millions of gallons of drinking water through evaporative cooling towers. That reputation is now a generation behind the technology. The newest facilities use closed-loop and liquid cooling — sealed systems that circulate coolant continuously instead of evaporating water away. According to the World Economic Forum, advanced liquid immersion cooling can reduce water consumption by as much as 91% and energy use by roughly half compar