Data Centers’ Contribution Toward Climate Change

The past 100 years have been accompanied by a drastic surge in human-triggered carbon dioxide emissions and, as a result, climate change. While innovations rising out of the last century have enabled manifold leaps in technology that have improved lives, climate scientists have discovered that the improvements stemming from these advancements are increasingly inseparable from the ecological and social burdens they have placed on the planet.

Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Because we’ve already released such high amounts of it, there is little that can be done to avoid experiencing some level of climate change impact. However, by reducing our current consumption of energy and subsequent release of CO2, we can reduce the extent of the impact and contain it to more manageable levels. With that being said, a crucial step in the fight is to determine exactly where we’re getting most of the emissions that induce climate change, and how to cut back on them.

Between the largest and smallest industries, data centers have positions in both as climate change contributors

On a large scale, several key industries play a role as major contributors of carbon emissions in the US. Transportation, textile, agriculture, and manufacturing companies make up the largest percentage of fossil fuel consumers, and are much more difficult to contain (although several agreements have been struck toward initiating that goal). On a smaller scale, individuals contribute their own fair share of emissions, but there are more opportunities for educating business owners and consumers about what they can do to reduce power usage. However, positioned both unfortunately and advantageously in the middle of the two scales is the data center industry, with operations both big and small.

The United States is second behind China in global emissions. Americans produce 14.69% of the world’s carbon dioxide, a 9% higher rate than the next biggest contributor, India. While data centers don’t carry the same emissions weight as the primary industries, the United States is home to over 12 million servers in data centers of varying degrees of size and clout, meaning there is still a significant opportunity to contribute a large footprint. The number one source for carbon emissions in the US is the burning of fossil fuels by power plants, so data centers in the US alone have a high stake in the consumption numbers. Considering the vast expanse of infrastructure and commodities that rely on electricity, power usage statistics must be carefully broken down and examined to quantify the changes that would need to occur in order to curb future emissions and reverse the current upward trend. Data center energy usage can be easily broken down, but handling the challenge of curbing emissions is the main question.

Feeding a vicious cycle

As one of the most useful and relied upon tech inventions of the past half-century, servers store all of our digital information and host most of the electronic services we have around-the-clock access to daily, like email, social media, websites, and search engines. Because of how much we rely on them every day, their numbers are increasing at high rates. While data centers inherently require a lot of energy to operate, what’s an even bigger concern is that the companies operating them typically leave them powered on at full capacity 24/7, which can waste up to 90% of the power they actually need. Combine this with the intensive cooling systems data centers require, and there is a huge percentage of power being used — 1.5–2% of all of the world’s electricity consumption, a rate that is projected to grow by 12% annually, which in turn accounts for 2% of the entire globe’s emissions.

One of the major sources of carbon emissions from data centers comes from cooling down servers, which can overheat very easily because they are powered on at all times. In most cases, servers necessitate a constantly running cooling system to make sure they remain at a level temperature, meaning the energy consumption within the data center is almost doubled. In hotter climates, data centers must go the extra mile to maintain climate control for servers, and as the Earth heats up from global warming, more and more data centers are required to run full-powered cooling systems, continuing the vicious cycle.

Another factor in the carbon footprint left by data centers is the fact that many are hosting zombie servers. Zombie servers run at all hours of the day along with the rest of the fleet, but are distinguished by the fact that they are performing no functions whatsoever. Typically, they exist because data center operators are hesitant to decommission excess servers because of time and risk investments associated with the process. However, not dealing with unused servers results in millions of wasted kilowatts of electricity, not to mention higher electricity bills over time. Of the 12 million servers in the US, around 30% of them are zombies, and at least 10 million zombie servers can be found worldwide. These staggering numbers are indicative of the overall impact data centers can potentially have on climate change.

The irony is that as data centers contribute to climate change, climate change will in turn generate new sets of problems that can only be solved by consuming even more power. Similarly, there are early predictions that climate change may influence storms to develop more frequently and with more strength, which could be bad news for the bi-coastal concentrations of data centers that can be knocked out by severe weather. Again, it’s a vicious cycle.

Harnessing new technology to combat climate change

It is clear there is a price to pay for having continuous access to our beloved World Wide Web and for generating and storing all of the information that accompanies it. Experts project that over the next five years, internet usage will grow by 60%. Fortunately, there are ways to step outside of the cycle, and at this point, major companies have no choice but to begin leading the industry in solutions. For instance, Google, Apple, and Facebook have begun harnessing renewable energy to power their services, and the organization Greenpeace is placing public pressure on other major data companies to follow suit. With data usage on the rise, there will be plenty of impetus for large-scale operations to make the switch to renewable resources in the future.

Being constantly connected also means we have access to the tools and information we need to help educate smaller data centers and business owners about the importance of energy conservation and combatting climate change. Making these companies aware of their own footprint and helping them develop plans to decommission and recycle unused and inefficient servers is the most important step. There are also solutions to explore for efficiently cooling servers and cutting costs to the company as well as to the environment — in essence, harnessing modern innovation to solve its own problems.