DC4Cities, An environmentally Sustainable Data Centre for Smart Cities : Project Nº 609304 : D2.2 - First market analysis

DC4Cities follows a vision: Data centres supporting a Smart City in its goal to use a high percentage of renewable energy sources in the city’s energy source mix. Even though, a set of conditions (e.g. smart meter market penetration and reformation of the EU emissions trading system) that all together will increase the potential for a striving market for DC4Cities is emerging, the current and near future situation might not allow to leverage on the full potential of the DC4Cities approach. Therefore, in the first iteration of the market analysis, the focus is on the identification of the ideal context for DC4Cities and the outline of a market for DC4Cities if this potential were unleashed within the next decades. In order to show where and how DC4Cities could be marketed today or in the very near future, the status quo of a market for DC4Cities is first analysed from a data centre, an energy system as well as from a smart city point of view. This is taken as a basis for the characterisation of a potential future environment for DC4Cities and the identification of characteristics of data centres that are part of this environment. These findings conclude in a careful estimation where and to which extent a DC4Cities based product portfolio could be successfully introduced into the market today and in the future.