Streaming and other data demands are taking a toll on the environment
As more smart devices rely on data to operate (think internet-connected refrigerators or self-driving cars), their electricity demands are set to skyrocket.
The gigabytes of data we’re using — although invisible — come at a significant cost to the environment. Some experts say it rivals that of the airline industry.
It’s not the gadgets themselves that are drawing so much power, it’s the far-flung servers that act as their electronic brains. Although often described as the “cloud,” the servers exist in real-world data centres, which Kearns calls “massive energy hogs.”
The data centres, often bigger than a football field, house endless stacks of servers handling many terabytes (thousands of gigabytes) of digital traffic. Just as laptops tend to warm during heavy usage, servers must be cooled to avoid overheating. And cooling so many machines requires plenty of power.
How much power does it take?
Anders Andrae, a researcher at Huawei Technologies Sweden whose estimates are often cited, told CBC News in an email he expects the world’s data centres alone will devour up to 651 terawatt-hours of electricity in the next year. That’s nearly as much electricity as Canada’s entire energy sector produces.
Andrae’s calculations, published in the International Journal of Green Technology, suggest data centres could more than double their power demands over the next decade. He projects computing will gobble up 11 per cent of global energy by 2030 and cloud-based services will represent a sizeable proportion of that.
“This will become completely unsustainable by 2040,” Andrae wrote.
So, what’s driving the increased demand for data? Streaming video is currently the biggest culprit, with platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video eating up 60.6 per cent of all internet traffic, according to network analytics firm Sandvine, headquartered in Waterloo, Ont. And streaming video usage is only growing.
But higher-speed 5G cellular networks, more widespread artificial intelligence and the nascent Internet of Things, such as smart home devices, are guaranteed to send data demands through the roof. Autonomous vehicles, for instance, require a constant flow of information to stay on the road.
Who operates the world’s biggest data centers – Google, Amazon, Netflix, and NSA
Data-voracious tech giants are pledging to clean up their act. Amazon Web Services is the market leader in providing cloud computing to other companies. AWS, as it’s known, says it exceeded 50 per cent renewable energy usage in 2018 and has committed in the “long term” to exclusively use clean power sources, such as wind.
Market Overview
The carbon neutral data center market is projected to grow from $3.46 billion in 2020 to $9.42 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 22.17% from 2020 to 2025. The growth in the carbon neutral data center market is expected to be driven by various government policies and environmental regulations especially which are aligned to reducing carbon emissions, for example, the International Climate Agreement. Apart from this, the ongoing trend of Industry 4.0 and digital transformation, which has increased the amount of data being produced due to the data intensive nature of the applications, has significantly impacted the market.
The carbon neutral data center market by industry has the largest share in the IT and telecom industry, followed by the BFSI industry.The IT and telecom industry or the ICT industry is a data-driven industry.
Almost all the applications are data intensive and generate a huge amount of data in the entire value chain.The telecom industry is dependent upon data centers as data transmission during internet services requires constant storage and processing, which is a primary criterion for quality services.
Thus, in order to maintain quality, the industry has to rely on data center facilities.
The hyperscale data centers have the highest potential in the carbon neutral data center market by data center type.It is expected to be the most impacted type as most of the hyperscale operators and service providers such as Google and Microsoft have pledged to achieve carbon neutrality in their entire value chain by 2030.
The companies have shown that lower PUE levels are possible to achieve with the use of efficient technologies utilizing renewable energy in the entirety of data center operations.Apart from this, the ongoing trend of cloud migration has also helped the market for hyperscale data center types.
The colocation type data center is accounted for the second-largest share in the market.The ongoing trend of digitization and the development of various technologies such as extended reality, internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and other enabling technologies have helped many start-ups to grow.
These start-ups do not have much financial support to own and operate a data center that supports their operations. This is where the colocation data centers become a solution for the needs of various smaller organizations with data center demands.
The hardware segment has the highest share among other solutions and is expected to remain the largest contributor in the market (by carbon neutral solution).Every data center has a set of hardware equipment and devices which form the basis of data center operations.
These include servers, power and cooling equipment, storage, and networking devices.All these devices are crucial for a data center.
Among these devices, servers consume almost half of the total power consumed by the data centers, followed by the cooling and power equipment. During the forecast period, the power consumed by the cooling and power segment is expected to reduce due to the increase in demand for efficient cooling systems.
Impact of COVID-19 on Carbon Neutral Data Center Market
COVID-19 has restricted the growth of almost every industry globally owing to the measures such as lockdown and travel restrictions undertaken by the governments.Due to this, the entire supply chain of the data center industry has been negatively affected.
This has restricted the flow of various equipment and devices, which are essential for data center operations, due to which many data centers were not able to get commissioned, and many projects were stalled.The lockdown also restricted people from traveling, which disallowed many data center architects and engineers to reach onsite for the construction of new facilities and maintenance of existing facilities.
The server utilization rate was also affected due to the halt in various computing activities in almost every industry.Many operators have reported that almost half of the servers were online during the pandemic.
However, industries such as telecom, which is the largest consumer of data center, operated in their fullest capacity and thus maintained the demand for data transmission and transfer services. This has also helped the industry to maintain a minimum operational return from the online services.
Competitive Landscape
The competitive landscape for the carbon neutral data market demonstrates an inclination toward companies adopting strategies such as business expansions, product launch and development and partnerships, collaborations, and joint ventures.Among all the strategies adopted, partnerships and collaboration business expansions have been the most prominent strategy adopted by the key players in the market.
In July 2020, Microsoft announced that it had successfully used hydrogen fuel cells to power a data center for two consecutive days.
The market players also focused on partnerships, collaborations, and joint ventures.In August 2020, Equinix, which is among the largest data center operators globally, announced a strategic partnership with Google, a cloud service provider.
The agreement between the companies enables enterprises utilizing Equinix services to more easily connect and migrate priority workloads to Google Cloud.