For my tech talk, I
wanted to explore the impacts that data centers are having as our technology
use increases so therefore the number of and power of data centers that support
them are growing. An issue that isn't currently recognized or addressed enough
is the growing environmental impact these data centers are having. Data centers
require a significant amount of electricity and water since they must run
around the clock and this is only a part of what causes them to be wasteful.
Some of the biggest
environmental issues that data centers face include energy use, land coverage,
and cooling systems. The world's data centers use about 30 billion watts of
electricity on average and waste about 90% of the energy they take in due to running
the servers on maximum capacity all day. The large size of some data centers
means that they could sit on hundreds of acres of land. The liquid and solid
waste produced by these facilities is substantial. Cooling systems are also
extremely important to data centers as the servers they contain get extremely
hot and must remain cooled to work properly. Many data centers are still cooled
with energy produced via fossil fuels, and with the large amount of space that
needs to be cooled around the clock, this pollution can add up quickly. Other
environmental impacts could include batteries, cleaning material, diesel fuel,
electronic waste, packaging, and office areas. These are all a part of regular
data center operations and the environmental impact of them should be thought
about to try and reduce.
The tech industry
boom has greatly helped to grow data centers and the problems that they cause.
One article describes that "the foundation of the information industry is
sharply at odds with its image of sleek efficiency and environmental friendliness."
Companies that consumers may consider to be ethical and socially responsible
were not necessarily any "cleaner" in how they run their data
centers. However, major companies are
making an effort to combat this image. For example, Google has 13 data center
locations and 34% of them now operate on renewable energy with over $1 Billion
being invested in it. Facebook with 5 total data centers is building new data
centers running on only wind energy and their older centers have switched to
hydroelectric power. Microsoft is now recycling 99% of the waste produced by
its European data centers and efficient, non-polluting water cooling systems
are used.
The environmental
issues surrounding data centers haven't got much attention in the past
partially because it is not something "interesting" to the public.
The impact data centers have are typically removed from day to day life so
people don't really think about the environmental effects of streaming a video
or using an app. However, these problems are not going to go away as cloud
computing is a huge trend and the amount of data being created is continually
growing. Because of this it is important to think about ways to create more
efficient and environmentally friendly data centers going forward.
Check out the
following resources for more information on these issues as well as specific
issues some companies have been having:
Important topic. Read the Atlantic article. I know there some sustainable initiatives (e.g., Google), but overall it is a problem. Solutions?
ReplyDeleteThe Datafloq link answered the question. You could have posted that image to show some efforts to use renewable energy (though certainly not enough).
ReplyDelete