Oxford DPhil students win Net-Zero Building Design Competition

Nethmi is supervised by Dr Radhika Khosla at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (SSEE) and the Future of Cooling Programme of the Oxford Martin School. Her research focuses on employing climate modelling to develop sustainable solutions for addressing climate challenges, particularly those arising from extreme heat and inequity.

The students were part of the UK RISE-UP team, a UK-wide collaboration involving students and academics from four universities: the University of Oxford, Loughborough University, London South Bank University and the University of Exeter. The UK team jointly secured the First Prize for their proposal RISE-UP, alongside the SubZero UPM team from the Technical University of Madrid (Spain). 

The ZERO Institute coordinated participation in this student competition as part of its new engagement initiatives, designed to foster innovation and experiential learning in the pursuit of net-zero solutions. The proposal was guided by three Oxford academics: Prof Jesus Lizana, Dr Amr Suliman, and Dr Scot Wheeler. 

“This is the second award that our students have received this year. We’re incredibly proud of the UK team’s success on such a timely and important topic for the future of data centres,” said Prof Jesus Lizana, Associate Professor and member of the leadership team of the ZERO Institute. 

Dr Radhika Khosla commented: “The number of data centres is increasing rapidly with over 100 being built in the next five years in the UK alone. The cooling needs of these centres will place a burgeoning demand on our energy grid, especially when combined with increasingly warm temperatures. I’m therefore delighted that Nethmi and her team have won the ASHRAE prize for their data centre design. If adopted worldwide, designs of this kind could allow our increasingly data hungry world to keep to its net zero targets.” 

Nethmi Jayaratne Kariyawasam said: “Winning the Net-Zero Building Design Competition with the ASHRAE UK Chapter team was a rewarding milestone. The project challenged us to think innovatively about sustainable design, and I’m excited to apply what we’ve learned to future projects that push the boundaries of energy-efficient building design.’’

Reflecting on the journey of this competition and winning the award, Gayatri Sundar Rajan said: “Bringing our team together from several universities across the UK to deliver a single integrated proposal was a challenge. But this opportunity gave us the foundation to try new ideas, challenge the status quo, and envision a future where we can expand cloud computing capabilities while caring for our environment. I’m excited to build on the learning from the ASHRAE data centre competition in the future.”

Cuicheng Zhang said: ‘‘I feel incredibly honoured to win this competition as part of the ASHRAE UK Chapter team. This project was an inspiring journey. Collaborating with peers to tackle a real-world challenge like creating a Net-Zero data centre has been an invaluable experience. I'm excited about the potential impact of our work.’

The competition required the design of a new data centre building that meets or exceeds ASHRAE Standard 189.1, with a strong emphasis on achieving Net-Zero or nearly Net-Zero energy performance. Teams had to work across disciplines to create a design that minimises energy demand while maximising the use of on-site renewable energy. In addition to core elements such as site sustainability, efficient building envelope, daylighting, indoor environmental quality, material selection, and life-cycle cost analysis, the competition emphasised innovative approaches to cooling. Participants were asked to incorporate advanced air-cooling, water-cooling, and immersion-cooling strategies into their design, ensuring both high energy efficiency and resilient operations.

The UK proposal “RISE-UP” focused on designing a new net-zero Data Centre concept that tackles one of the biggest challenges of the digital era: how to meet the surging demand for cloud computing while minimising energy use, water demand, and carbon emissions.