Maincubes, a leading European sustainable data centre operator, has announced that it has officially received its building permit to build its newest BER01 data centre on the environmentally designed Berlin GoWest campus by 2025.
The Informationstechnikzentrum Bund (ITZBund), the central IT service provider for the German Federal Administration providing IT services for 200 federal government agencies and supporting public administration with modern IT, chose Maincubes as its build-to-suit data centre provider and operator and will be the primary tenant.
In alignment to meet its environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, the BER01 data centre will be built according to the German Federal Environment Agency’s ‘Blue Angel’ requirements along with being German TÜV-tested and ISO-certified. These ensure maincubes customers will meet future energy efficiency specifications and regulatory requirements.
BER01 boasts energy-efficient cooling, renewable energy and targeted waste heat recovery. Located in the GoWest commercial district in Berlin’s Schmargendorf district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, the data centre will provide 5,100 square metres of IT space, 8.2 megawatts (MW) of IT capacity and 100 per cent SLA availability.
As with all maincubes data centres, the power for BER01 will come from renewable energy sources. Additionally, the waste heat from the BER01 data centre will be reused by directly feeding the heat into other buildings on the campus. This build-to-suit site boasts a sustainable cooling technology that utilises adiabatic cooling and allows temperature regulation for each room based on the requirements of the hardware used. This approach provides customers significant cost savings and brings BER01’s Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) significantly below 1.3.
Due to its latest energy concepts and forward-looking technologies, GoWest in Berlin was chosen as the site for BER01 as it sets an environmental example and this was an important criterion for the choice of location for Maincubes. The GoWest business quarter was awarded the preliminary certificate of the DGNB (German Sustainable Building Council) at the Platinum level for its contribution to climate protection, biodiversity, circular economy and much more.
“The location at the environmentally focused GoWest quarter fits perfectly with the sustainability principles of Maincubes, according to which we have aligned our data centres from the very beginning. With its state-of-the-art architecture and cutting-edge technology, we want to support our customers by minimising the environmental footprint of their IT hardware, while maximising their energy savings and costs,” said Albrecht Kraas, CTO at Maincubes.
“This is achieved through efficient planning, and flexibility in terms of IT space configurations, enabling customers to deploy new, more energy-efficient technologies to achieve their climate goals. We are proud to be able to make an active contribution to the greater sustainability in Berlin with BER01 and are delighted that ITZBund has chosen Maincubes.”
With its new investor structure and DTCP as a strategic partner and shareholder alongside Art-Invest Real Estate, Maincubes plans to invest more than €1 billion in new data centres over the next few years. In addition to building more data centres in Berlin, Maincubes also plans to build more sites across Germany and Europe.
Oliver Menzel, CEO of maincubes, said: “Berlin has become an important digital location, primarily due to international cloud service providers and the growing tech startup scene. We are seeing an increased demand from the government sector for data centre space, and this will continue to grow. We therefore plan to build more data centres in Berlin after BER01. New builds will be in line with maincubes and its customers’ ESG goals and aligned with the required digital sovereignty maintained in their own country. We believe in the use of climate-friendly technologies setting a course for a greener data centre market in close cooperation with customers, partners and policymakers. With that, we are pleased to be actively involved here and to set an example.”
