On 6 August 2020 the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and five other government agencies issued the Circular on Organising and Implementing the Recommendation of National Green Data Centres (2020).(1)

According to the circular, all regions will recommend a batch of well-managed and representative data centres featuring high-energy efficiency and advanced technology in major application fields of data centres (eg, manufacturing, telecoms, Internet, public institutions, energy, finance and e-commerce), in accordance with the Evaluation Indicator System for Green Data Centres.

The circular provides the following basic conditions that a recommended data centre will meet:

  • The owner of the data centre will have independent legal person status. The data centre will have clear property rights and abide by relevant laws, regulations, policies and standards in the process of construction and operation. In the past three years (including data centres that have been open for fewer than three years), the data centre has had no major safety, environmental protection or other incidents and no other serious illegal or untrustworthy conducts decided by judicial or administrative agencies.
  • The data centre will have a clear and complete physical boundary, independent power supply and distribution and a cooling system that meet the requirements of the Action Plan for Green and Efficient Refrigeration and has been officially operating for one or more consecutive years as of the application date.
  • The construction and layout will meet the requirements of the Guiding Opinions on the Construction Layout of Data Centres and local construction planning and other local laws and regulations.
  • It is not included in the list of Special Supervision and Rectification for the Energy Efficiency of the Industrial Energy Conservation Supervision Data Centre in 2019..

Endnotes

(1) See here.