SDEA Named a Finalist at the 2026 Global Good Awards

SDEA is a finalist in the Technology & AI for Good category at the 2026 Global Good Awards – the only entry from the data center sector among the six shortlisted.

The Global Good Awards, a UK-based sustainability program, announced its 2026 finalists on June 19. Winners will be named at a ceremony in London on September 24. SDEA was shortlisted for the SDEA Navigator and Label, its tools for measuring and independently certifying data center sustainability on twelve months of operational data.

The Company SDEA Keeps

What stands out is the category itself. The other five finalists come from well outside the data center world: a nature-project assessment framework (Earthly), product-level carbon data for construction (Hilti), an acoustic material that reduces noise without blocking airflow (Boston University), solar-powered energy sharing for Pacific communities (Radiant Technologies), and home energy management at scale (ScottishPower).

About the Global Good Awards

The Global Good Awards are a UK-based program recognizing social and environmental sustainability across 19 categories, open to corporates, SMEs, charities, and public bodies. Their guiding line is "rewarding actions not aims," and the awards themselves hold a Gold Awards Trust Mark for how they are run.

• Awards ceremony: September 24, 2026, London

• SDEA's category: Technology & AI for Good

SDEA is the odd one out, and in a useful way. The recognition comes from a broad sustainability and tech-for-good audience rather than from the data center industry itself. Read by people outside the sector that produced it, the case for measured, audited certification still held up. That's a form of validation the industry's own applause can't provide.

Why Measurement Was the Draw

Data centers underpin nearly every digital service, from email and cloud to AI and payments, and they rank among the fastest-rising sources of emissions in any industrial sector. Most sustainability claims made about them are never independently checked.

The SDEA Navigator measures a facility's full operational sustainability – facility efficiency, IT efficiency, carbon, and water – on a year of real operating data. The SDEA Label turns that measurement into third-party audited certification. The framework has been recommended by the German Federal Environment Ministry as a blueprint for EU-wide reporting and referenced by the IEA.