The standards. Where we sit.
We are not landing on empty ground. The data center industry has measured its performance for years, with a normalized vocabulary and authoritative bodies. This page maps what already exists — the official KPIs, the ISO standards — to situate, by contrast, what we add.
🤓 More advanced than Understanding data centers, upstream of our Method. It is the middle rung: the existing playing field, before our grade.
The map of standards
Who sets authority, and over what. The global backbone is ISO/IEC 30134 (via the SC39 committee); everything else orbits it.
| Body | Role | What it standardizes |
|---|---|---|
| ISO/IEC JTC1 SC39 | the international committee | the ISO/IEC 30134 series = the official data center KPIs |
| The Green Grid | industry consortium | invented the PUE (later adopted by ISO), plus CUE, WUE, and the PI index |
| ETSI | telecom standards (EU) | the DCp index (Data Center Performance), an A→I label |
| Cenelec | European adoption | transposes the ISO 30134 standards into Europe |
| France Datacenter · Gimélec · AGIT | French industry | the KPI white paper (2017): pedagogy, anti-greenwashing |
| InfraNum | infrastructure federation | 2025 guide: proximity data centers, sovereignty |
The official indicators
The vocabulary the whole sector shares. Almost all of them measure one thing: the efficiency of the machine.
| Indicator | Standard | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| PUE | ISO/IEC 30134-2 | the overall energy efficiency of the infrastructure. The flagship metric: 2.0 = the French average, 1.28 = the most recent sites. |
| REF | ISO/IEC 30134-3 | the share of renewable energy consumed |
| ITEEsv | ISO/IEC 30134-4 (in progress) | the energy efficiency of the server fleet |
| CUE | Green Grid | the carbon emitted per unit of IT energy |
| WUE | Green Grid | the water consumed per unit of energy — but machine-side, not territory-side |
| ERF · COP · CER | ISO SC39 (in progress) | waste-heat reuse, cooling efficiency |
Letter grades already exist — but they don't measure the same thing
The industry already has letter grades. The PI (Performance Indicator, The Green Grid) rates a data center from A to G; the DCp (ETSI RGS/OEU-0011) rates it from A to I — like the energy label on a fridge.
But those letters measure the energy efficiency of the infrastructure (PUE, waste-heat reuse, renewables); they are self-declared by the operator, on an anonymous machine. No one puts a letter on the acceptability — water, land, territory, governance — of a named, real site, from the outside.
Same alphabet, radically different dimension. That is precisely the gap we fill.
Where we sit
Our Energy pillar speaks exactly the sector's standardized language — we lean on the standards, we do not bypass them. The A is proven, in fact, by an accredited ISO/IEC 30134 audit.
| Our indicator | Matching official KPI |
|---|---|
| Energy · PUE (declared, graded with caution) | PUE — ISO/IEC 30134-2 |
| Energy · real supply (PPA, % renewables) | REF — ISO/IEC 30134-3 |
| Energy · carbon intensity (RTE eCO2mix) | close to CUE (Green Grid) |
| Water · WUE / real water source | WUE (Green Grid) |
| Land · waste-heat reuse | close to ERF |
And here is the difference, by design. The official KPIs are all infrastructure-efficiency metrics. None measures what we grade across four of our five pillars:
- Water — the water stress of the territory (not the machine's consumption, but the strain on the local resource)
- Land & biodiversity — artificialized soil, protected areas, ecological corridors
- Local impact — the town's absorption capacity, Seveso hazard, observed opposition, elected officials' stance
- Transparency & governance — consultation, consent, public inquiry
The industry optimizes the machine. We grade its acceptability within the territory.
What the state itself examines
Industry KPIs stop at the machine — but public authorities already look at the territory. In the Île-de-France region, where a state approval is mandatory above 5,000 m² of floor area, the regional prefecture published a guidance note on 1 June 2026 setting out, in writing, what it examines in a data-center file. The list maps onto our pillars almost line for line.
| What the Île-de-France authorities examine | Our indicator |
|---|---|
| Build on existing business sites and brownfield land — no urban extension where an already-urbanised alternative exists (regional plan, orientations 126, 102 and 85; net-zero-artificialisation trajectory) | Land · soil status (artificialised / farmland / natural) |
| Above 40 MW of grid connection, heightened scrutiny in areas under electrical strain, so the grid keeps capacity for other local needs | Energy · grid connection capacity and queue |
| 20% of the electricity consumed recovered as heat — the level recommended in the dense urban core, to be designed in from the start | Energy · district-heating connectability · announced heat recovery |
| Particular vigilance over designated water-allocation zones — the Albien, Champigny and Beauce aquifers, la Mauldre, part of le Vexin, la Beuvronne, la Thérouanne and La Bassée — and abstraction limited through the cooling design | Water · basin water stress · cooling and announced volume |
| Opinion of the host local authorities — commitments expected on jobs, training and public facilities | Local impact · municipality profile · position of elected officials |
| PUE, WUE, ISO 14001 and ISO 50001 — plus the European Code of Conduct for Data Centres — to evidence the performance claimed | Energy · PUE · Water · WUE (see the table above) |
What this changes for us — and what it does not. These criteria are neither scoring thresholds nor national law: they are the points one French regional prefecture examines, file by file, for one approval. They produce no letter, no comparison between sites, and nothing is published in a form anyone could check one site against another.
That is exactly the boundary. The state assesses case by case and behind closed doors; we measure the same dimensions from the outside, on one grid, across the whole corpus — and we publish them. We grade what the state already looks at: the best answer to anyone claiming these dimensions are our invention.
The industry writes the rule in its white papers. We publish the score — in public, site by site — and we cite its standards to be unassailable, not to be endorsed.