The environmental cost of data centers is increasing yearly. More operations rely on connectivity and large tech stacks, and these hubs must keep their lights on every second of the year to prevent disruptions and societal stress. Their ecological toll and greenhouse gas emissions are skyrocketing as much as they are expanding, making carbon neutrality a priority for greener operations. What does progress look like?
Renewable Energy Integration
Investing in clean energy is the most apparent implementation method that will make for immediate cuts in carbon emissions. Some data centers use more power than entire nations, including South Africa, Egypt, Argentina, Colombia and Nigeria. Becoming responsible generators will lower the impact of the tech sector overall.
Advanced Cooling Techniques
Better cooling systems are the most advantageous way to maintain capacity while lowering environmental impact. What are some recent enhancements in cooling strategies that are better than traditional machinery?
Free Cooling
Fresh air is not an advancement, but many have forgotten its utility. Facilities often rely on energy-intensive machinery to manage indoor environmental controls. However, free cooling exists if data center planners strategically place operations in suitable climates. Leveraging outside air and other natural resources could cool servers without any investments.
Liquid and Immersion Cooling
These methods have only gotten better in the last several years. Liquid and immersion cooling methods are usable separately or in combination, and they have powerful impacts on energy efficiency. Liquid cooling methods, such as direct-to-chip cooling, remove heat directly from the equipment, while immersion cooling involves submerging equipment in a dielectric fluid.
Cold Plates
Cold plates are used in liquid cooling. Coolants flow through the plate’s internal channels to provide highly targeted cooling. Because they are small and easier to mass produce, adopting this method is scalable while remaining eco-friendly.
Evaporative Cooling
This system takes the hot air in the data center and transfers it over pads soaked in water. The reaction causes the liquid to evaporate, naturally cooling the air. However, this could cause an unnecessary humidity spike in some climates, which is why it is more effective in drier regions.
Biomimicry
Data centers can take inspiration from natural processes to become more energy- and resource-efficient. Innovators are being inspired by everything, including beehives and trees. Here are several examples.
|
Technology Impacted |
Natural Inspiration |
Results |
| Server racks | Honeycombs | Improved airflow, better stability and vibration resistance, enhanced space optimization |
| Cooling systems | Termite mounds | Enhanced self-regulation by leveraging porous materials and the chimney effect |
| Heat management tech, like server casings and surfaces | Elephant skin | Better dissipation and transfer because of wrinkled designs |
| Cable management | Trees | Better organization, fewer materials and enhanced cooling |
| Wind energy equipment | Whale fins | Boosted efficiency, higher range of speed, improved efficiency at lower speeds |
| Concrete and protective coatings | Self-healing biological systems | Longer resource lifespans by infusing microbes that can heal materials |
| Energy-producing machinery | Photosynthesis | Higher energy creation through sunlight-harnessing techs like fuel cells, bio-solar tools and solar collectors and antennas |
AI-Driven Energy Optimization
Artificial intelligence (AI) in data centers presents an opportunity for multiple sectors to reduce their adverse climate impact. However, AI relies on tons of energy. So, before incorporating it into data centers, experts must fully realize sustainable AI. The foresight prevents AI’s adverse impact from ruining the progress of a clean data center.
AI algorithms could use climate data to guide the center’s performance when deployed ethically. It must measure greenhouse gas inventory, analyze all emissions scopes and provide projections for how well implementations can yield results.
The technology could adjust cooling techniques reactively and dynamically based on outside temperatures. Integrations could also allow connected external battery sources to distribute energy smarter during peak hours when loads are the most stressed.
Modular Data Centers
Modular designs for racks and servers reduce the materials a data center needs to operate. It also makes everything more repairable, as components are mass-produced with fewer materials. It reduces construction waste from the beginning and lowers the amount of e-waste data centers produce with unnecessary equipment upgrades and replacements.
Waste Heat Utilization
The heat servers and other tech produces creates copious energy wastage. If data centers had mechanisms to capture and recycle this heat, it could be a powerful asset to supplement energy needs.
The data center could even redistribute the wasted heat to nearby businesses, such as greenhouses or district heating facilities that could gain more from the surplus generation. They could become distributed energy resources by bidirectionally transmitting energy from uninterruptible and backup power sources.
Storage With Low Power Usage Effectiveness
Smarter storage close to the base of operations is crucial for decreasing energy consumption and carbon emissions. Around 30% of a data center’s energy consumption goes to storage, with one petabyte demanding 300,000 kilowatt-hours. Converging silos from disparate hardware and software into a high-density design will lead to more intelligent data management.
Specialized Operations
Countless tech trends, including AI, are increasing the need for higher-power equipment and faster information processing. Work-from-home servers for data entry companies have vastly different requirements compared to massive teams of cybersecurity analysts. This is why data centers could be built with niches in mind, so sustainability efforts can be more targeted.
Decentralized finance and cryptocurrency are some of the most prominent examples of environmentally questionable online activities. Engineers and architects could incorporate additional measures to compensate for its impact if data centers could be devoted specifically to these use cases. Using immersion cooling instead of conventional methods would be perfect for making a crypto data center run productively and in a more carbon-friendly way.
Sustainable Construction and Retrofitting
Industry professionals must return to veteran data centers and reimagine them with carbon neutrality standards in mind. Countless agencies have developed building-specific frameworks, such as LEED and BREEAM, to guide workforces in eco-friendly design. Nothing stops stakeholders from retrofitting a building’s components with materials that help manage temperatures or reduce the structure’s embodied carbon.
Impact Investing
Data center managers must go beyond the operations they oversee and help the sector at large. Impact investing is one of the best ways to empower the industry long-term.
For example, an investment agency in the United Arab Emirates funded a Canadian liquid cooling innovator with over $10 million. Many research and tech startups cannot acquire the assets needed to bring an idea to its fullest potential. The money’s impacts will ripple throughout data centers worldwide as the technology develops.
How Sustainable Data Centers Look
There are countless perspectives data center stakeholders can make when achieving a more carbon-neutral building. The business is inherently energy-intensive, and cutting usage and greenhouse gases means looking at the operation from every angle.
Engineers can design machinery smarter, energy systems can be greener, cooling must be stronger and stakeholders can finance for the future. Every action comprises a holistic decarbonization strategy, setting a precedent for any new data center.