CyrusOne, a leading global data center developer and operator, and BEOS AG and Swiss Life Asset Managers, the leading asset manager and project developer of corporate real estate in Germany, today celebrated a significant milestone in their strategic partnership with the official ‘handover protocol’.
The handover underscores the interdependence of the parties, with CyrusOne contracted to secure the delivery of power infrastructure to the 73-hectare campus and designing the data centers to be capable of delivering waste heat to the campus. Alongside this, BEOS AG and Swiss Life Asset Managers are committed to build all infrastructure services to the 63,000 square meter plot including campus landscaping, roads, street lighting, mains water, drainage, communications ducting, and waste heat recovery connection points.
This latest milestone follows the Partners announcement in September 2023 confirming that CyrusOne had been selected to deliver a cutting-edge 81MW data center scheme that prioritizes sustainability within the commercial and industrial mixed-use regeneration development, FRANKFURT WESTSIDE, managed by BEOS AG and Swiss Life Asset Managers.
“We have a shared interest in building the most sustainable and community-focused developments,” said Carsten Schneider, MD Germany at CyrusOne. “The level of trust with BEOS and Swiss Life has formed over several years, during which each company demonstrated that it had extensive experience, knowledge of the local environment, a strong existing network and great sustainability and community focused ambition and motivation. Today marks a significant step in our common vision becoming a reality.”
“Our shared ambitions and motivations with CyrusOne regarding ESG made this partnership a natural fit from the outset,” Mathias Strauch, Senior Project Manager. “Today is an exciting step in further cementing our long-term strategic partnership, enabling a new era of sustainability in the German data center market. This is only the beginning.”
With sustainability at the heart of the FRANKFURT WESTSIDE project, the campus has already been pre-assessed for DGNB Platinum and CyrusOne’s highly efficient data centers has been designed to achieve a BREEAM ‘Very Good’ certification as a minimum. Additional best practices that will be implemented include:
Heat Re-Use
Provision of re-used waste heat by CyrusOne’s FRA7 data centers is a key aspect of FRANKFURT WESTSIDE, with the data centers capable of deploying a potential 40MW of innovative waste heat re-use methods within the campus heating network when at full capacity. The process is designed to see heat from the servers in the data halls absorbed into a water system that will be connected via heat exchangers to pipe network infrastructure, built and enabled by BEOS, that will in turn connect to the buildings on the development. Depending on the heat requirement, the temperature of the water will be increased via a heat pump within each building. This will enable the local community of users, industrial tenants and employees to benefit from a “waste” product, thus reducing the carbon footprint.
Power
CyrusOne has contracted to secure significant power provision in a very competitive market for the entire development, with 150MVA utility power supply at 110kV. It also intends to invest in extensive construction measures to create a new redundant high-voltage grid connection and a dedicated substation serving the data centers.
This unique arrangement is designed to bring greater levels of efficiency in electrical distribution so that each building in the development is able to maximize the use of renewable-sourced energy and to align with the anticipated energy efficiency targets proposed by German legislation. The data centers are also designed to incorporate PV cells on the roof to generate power for the office areas and other ancillary spaces.
Biodiversity & Community
The development as a whole will promote the efficient use of the existing structures, careful use of resources and provide open space designed for biodiversity, leisure, and recreation. CyrusOne’s dedicated biodiversity initiatives will also be prioritized, with ecological landscaping to increase biodiversity and provide habitats for wildlife, the provision of 5,500 sqm of open green space, and the planting of over sixty trees. Over 1,800 sqm of the facility walls and roofs will be ‘green’, not only creating an aesthetically pleasing outlook for the local community but also improving air quality by filtering pollutants, reducing noise, supporting thermoregulation, and increasing the buildings’ energy efficiency.