Sustainable Computing Infrastructure: Designing Energy Efficient Data Centers and Computing Infrastructure

Abstract

Data centers and computing infrastructure underpin the digital economy but consume rapidly growing amounts of electricity, water, and materials. This paper synthesizes state-of-the-art design strategies and operational practices to achieve energy and resource efficient, low carbon computing at hyper scale and edge. We unify facility engineering, IT architecture, and workload orchestration into a holistic framework that targets power usage effectiveness (PUE) ≤ 1.20, water usage effectiveness (WUE) < 0.2 L/kWh, and near real time carbon optimization (24/7 CFE matching). We review thermal envelopes and air/liquid cooling guidance, power chain efficiency, renewable and storage integration, and carbon aware scheduling. We propose a practical design reference architecture and a multi objective optimization methodology that balances efficiency, resilience, latency, and cost. Case evidence and modeling show that combining high return measures—rightsizing, advanced airflow management, heat reuse, free cooling, direct to chip liquid cooling, and carbon aware scheduling—can reduce facility energy overhead by 30–60%, IT energy by 10–25%, and Scope 2 emissions by >70% in grids with high variable renewables. We conclude with a roadmap and research agenda for AIera workloads.