Sustainability is crucial for combating climate change and protecting our planet. While there are various systems that can pose a threat to sustainability, data centers are particularly significant due to their substantial energy consumption and environmental impact. Although data centers are becoming increasingly accountable to be sustainable, the current practice of reporting sustainability data is often mired with simple green-washing. To improve this status quo, users as well as regulators need to verify the data on the sustainability impact reported by data center operators. To do so, data centers must have appropriate infrastructures in place that provide the guarantee that the data on sustainability is collected, stored, aggregated, and converted to metrics in a secure, unforgeable, and privacy-preserving manner. Therefore, this paper first introduces the new security challenges related to such infrastructure, how it affects operators and users, and potential solutions and research directions for addressing the challenges for data centers and other industry segments.

翻译：可持续性对于应对气候变化和保护地球至关重要。尽管有多种系统可能对可持续性构成威胁，但数据中心因其巨大的能源消耗和环境足迹而尤为突出。虽然数据中心在可持续性方面正面临越来越高的问责要求，但目前可持续性数据的报告方式往往陷入简单的"漂绿"困境。为改善这一现状，用户及监管机构需要验证数据中心运营商报告的可持续性影响数据。为此，数据中心必须建立适当的底层基础设施，以保障可持续性数据的采集、存储、聚合及指标转化过程具备安全性、不可伪造性和隐私保护性。基于此，本文首先介绍此类基础设施所面临的新型安全挑战，阐述其如何影响运营商及用户，并提出应对数据中心及其他行业领域这些挑战的潜在解决方案与研究方向。