Datacentres are major greenhouse gas emitters

Datacentres are responsible for 2 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, around the same amount as air travel. But although datacentres are improving energy efficiency, these gains are lost to the rapid demand to store ever increasing amounts of data.

As the Guardian reports, our growing appetite for digital services – watching online television shows, paying our bills online, downloading apps – are now responsible for around 2 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. This is roughly the same amount as the aviation industry.

All of these digital services have to be stored on servers. For major data users such as Google and Facebook, the datacentres housing their servers can cover an area as large as 150,000 square metres, writes the Guardian. And these require a tremendous amount of energy to keep cool.

While the individual browsing footprint is miniscule – Facebook puts its average user’s annual footprint at 269 grams of CO2, the equivalent of a cup of coffee – the collective impact is massive: Google’s carbon footprint was 1,766,014 tonnes CO2 equivalent in 2013, the bulk of which comes from datacentres, reports the Guardian.

But any efforts to cut emissions – from housing data centres in cool climates to improving energy efficiency – are being eaten up by the growth in demand for more and larger datacentres.

“Energy efficiency is of course very important,” Gary Cook, senior IT analyst at Greenpeace, told the Guardian. “It’s critical. It’s also completely insufficient on its own. If you look at the growth in datacentre demand and our digital world, energy efficiency will slow the [emissions] curve, but the curve is still going to the moon.”

According to Cook, datacentres will have to be powered by renewable energy in the future if we are going to address climate change and embrace the energy transition.

 

Photo credit: Phil Rogers, flickr/Creative Commons

 

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