DATA CENTRES
on to customers by co-location providers . And it is good for sales and marketing . Many organisations require that their third-party suppliers and partners are also sustainable .
Nearly all the big names have set fairly high targets for themselves as well . Microsoft is aiming to have 60 % of its energy use in data centres come from renewable sources early in the next decade . As Greenpeace and other groups point out , by this point energy use overall may have tripled anyway , so even with a goal of 60 %, overall data centres will still be using substantially more energy from fossil fuels . In 2015 the world ’ s data centres used 416.2 terawatts hours of electricity .
It ’ s all in the location One way to solve this problem is to choose the right location for a data centre . Facebook has placed data
“ The popularity of new technologies such artificial intelligence and the internet of things are spawning a massive increase in computing power , with some predicting data centre energy consumption will triple in the next decade ”
– Guy England , Data Centre Director , Lenovo Group
centres , each sized over 300,000 sq ft , in Sweden just inside the Arctic Circle . Powered entirely by renewable energy , the facilities can make use of the low outside temperatures for cooling . Underground is another useful location to ensure cool temperatures . There is a six-storey data centre located in an abandoned Norwegian mine . Microsoft recently created quite a media splash by testing a data centre prototype submerged in the Pacific Ocean that could draw on wave motion for power .
With each of these there are other problems to overcome . These are not suitable for applications that can ’ t cope with a latency of more than a few milliseconds . And there is already a lot of environmental research into the negative effects that a local increase in temperature has on an underwater ecosystem that may prevent any widespread adoption of underwater facilities .
Locations in the cooler climes
8 September 2017