Green IT
The Green Race
“The data centre is the heart of the Internet and as business and daily lives are digitalised, the heart must
be fit. The trick is expanding, improving and innovating and at the same time achieving sustainability. In
the Nordics, we are doing just that,” says CEO of DigiPlex, Gisle M. Eckhoff.
T
here weren’t many people in
the industry 15 or 20 years
ago, who saw the demand
for data becoming this big,
this fast. Companies that
were born operating online, such
as Amazon and eBay, were much
more prepared, but essentially
all companies developed a
pressing and rising demand
for data centre solutions.
Predictably, as this escalated,
cost became a key concern.
Data centres are not only
expensive to run, there are also
significant costs in cooling them
down. Due to the amount of
18 | October 2017
data they store and energy they
consume, they can create excessive
heat and therefore need to be
cooled regularly. To house the data
and use energy safely, a data centre
is typically housed in a sturdy
and secure building that stores
servers, with enough space to also
house large amounts of cooling
equipment. The amount of energy
consumption needed to house the
data as well as cool the machines is
costly to both the companies and
the environment.
Today, data centres are
responsible for 2% of the world’s
annual CO2 emissions and 3%
of global power consumption,
which is quickly increasing.
If we consider the macro-
drivers, such as digitalisation,
content consumption, Artificial
Intelligence and IoT, this is just
a fraction of the impact the data
centre industry may come to
have on our planet in the years
to come.
Global data traffic will increase
from 12.9GB per capita in 2016
to 35.5GB in 2021, according
to Cisco. The result will be an
estimated global electricity usage
of 508 terawatts in 2021 from
data centres alone, surpassing