In the last 12 months, I have seen a massive increase in the demand for data centre capacity. This has been fuelled by the explosion in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, which are driving power consumption to new heights, to a level I don’t believe anyone even imagined 2 – 3 years ago. These changes in scale are making it even more important that the data centre industry plays its part to achieve a carbon neutral future – but the question is, can data centres ever really be carbon neutral?
The data centre building can’t be Carbon Neutral
The immediate challenge for any company that is building new infrastructure, is that the building itself, in my opinion, can’t be carbon neutral. This is because of the amount of embodied carbon that exists in a data centre building including raw material extraction, manufacturing and transportation. Of course, a lot can be done to minimise the building impact, but the construction involved, the steel and cement, plus the electrical and mechanical plant that is needed, will have a massive impact. So, I believe we should change the question to “can the net impact of the data centre be carbon neutral over time and how quickly?”
Let’s consider how Carbon Neutrality is actually defined. In effect it is the goal of reducing the net human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to zero. In the case of a data centre, you can’t achieve that in the building and infrastructure. The only way to reach the goal is by taking other actions that capture carbon or cause reductions in GHGs generated elsewhere, for example in electricity generation.
The data centre operation can be carbon neutral in-life
To achieve carbon neutrality for the data centre operation, developers have to compensate for the carbon cost of its construction and its energy use in-life, by preventing GHG generation elsewhere. Historically data centre operators have tried to offset their carbon generation by purchasing carbon credits, however this practice has rightly been widely criticised. I think that as an industry we need to do much more to minimise our environmental impact than simply handing the problem to someone else.
Data centre operators and cloud companies are finding ways to make a positive environmental impact through investment in sustainable power, this also helps secure the power they need to run their data centres. At its most basic level this can be done through Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) for renewable sources. This means that a data centre operator makes a contractual commitment for renewable power which indirectly funds the development of more sustainable, additive energy (i.e. new supply), preventing the need for new generation from fossil fuels.
While this arrangement is perfectly sensible in principle, the reality is that by contracting for PPAs, data centre operators are actually taking green power from other uses, such as residential, because the rate of sustainable power development is generally struggling to keep up with demand. Therefore, while this is the right thing to do, it also has knock on implications, i.e. it is not the silver bullet on its own.
Hyperscalers will invest in generation and grid
Some Hyperscalers and operators are going further by investing directly in renewable energy companies/projects, guaranteeing their future power by committing to purchase and consume some of that new capacity. This can, but not always, mean that the generation projects that are closer to the data centre are more attractive because the challenge of transmission infrastructure is reduced, as is cost. However, where the renewable supply is not close to the data centre, which is much more often than not, we inevitably see challenges in the transmission network. So to overcome this some of the very large CSPs are now lobbying Governments to allow them to build their own transmission networks, Ireland being a good example. With “grids” often classed as a national security asset/critical infrastructure it will be interesting to see how this develops.
Developing power infrastructure is highly capital intensive, but the hyperscalers get the additional benefit that they can control their supply chain from generation, through to transmission and consumption. However, is it realistic to expect data centre operators to have the resources (time, money and skill set) to influence Government policy in the same way that a few of the large CSPs can do? For certain, operators can’t add points to a country’s GDP, so I would suggest that no operator, or perhaps even group of operators, can realistically achieve the same level of influence as a major CSP.
Data centre developers must be careful not to make promises they can’t keep
As the focus on sustainability in data centres increases, operators/developers need to be able to say they will be carbon neutral, because they want to deliver for their hyperscale customers. But, since they don’t typically have the financial resources to invest in generation, meeting these commitments may be difficult or even impossible as the scale of energy consumption increases.
I can see a future where hyperscale CSPs work differently with operators by letting them build the data centre and then the hyperscaler brings the renewable power, so that together they can make the entire project carbon neutral. My view is that this model is easier for the major CSPs, not only can they further control their supply chain, it is also much easier, and cleaner, to reflect that clean power in their own sustainability reporting.
Data centre efficiency is important, but it won’t deliver neutrality
For the last 20 years data centres have made massive improvements in efficiency to the point where approximately 13% of the energy required to run the IT is needed to cool it. The challenge now is even though greater efficiencies can be found we are facing diminishing returns. Given the forecast of high data centre growth, as an industry we can’t rely on efficiency to curb energy usage. However, we could see additional benefits by simply increasing operating temperatures in the data hall. This will need leadership from the big cloud operators to change and in my opinion, there are energy savings to be made across all data centres if that can happen. The first rule of energy savings is “reduce”, so this would seem an easy win, yet today it hasn’t happened.
The Evolution approach to Sustainability
Evolution Data Centres was founded with the sole purpose of developing and operating large scale sustainable data centres. But if you asked me, given the complexity, I would be reluctant to set a date for carbon neutrality. However, we do commit to three things.
The first is to build as sustainably as commercially possible, the second is to closely measure our performance, and transparently report against that. The third is to continuously seek improvement until we get close to, or reach carbon neutrality.
Data Centres have an important role to play in providing much needed digital infrastructure. However, we also have a responsibility to ensure that this is done with minimal environmental impact.
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This piece was originally published in Issue 5 of w.media Cloud & Data Center Magazine