Data centers worldwide already account for about 1.5% of total electricity consumption, and this share is expected to double within just four years. A new report from the consulting firm Arup warns that the pace of energy efficiency improvement in the sector is clearly slowing down, making further gains dependent on radical design and engineering innovations.
The report 'The future of data centres: Energy’ reveals that the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) indicator for hyperscale data centers – those with over 100 MW capacity and more than 5,000 servers – has stagnated at around 1.55-1.60 for the last three years. This means a significant portion of electricity is still used to run supporting infrastructure rather than actual computing. In some regions, like Ireland, data centers already consume more power than the entire urban residential sector, while in Virginia they account for over a quarter of all electricity use.
Efficiency gains hit a plateau
PUE compares the total energy used by a data center facility to the energy consumed by its IT equipment alone. The closer the ratio is to 1.0, the more efficient the operation. However, after years of steady improvement, the metric for hyperscale facilities has flatlined. – So far, significant progress has been made in reducing PUE, but further improvements will increasingly yield lower benefits. At the same time, the demand for energy used in data centers will double by 2030, so further efficiency gains will be necessary and require innovative design and engineering approaches – said Andrzej Borowski, technology leader at Arup.
Borowski emphasized that design, investment and regulatory decisions will be crucial in supporting changes to the wider energy system. The report argues that operators must adopt solutions such as liquid cooling, heat recovery from servers, and intelligent workload management to cut power use wherever possible.
Real-world examples of innovation
Several pioneering facilities already point the way. The Citigroup Data Centre in Frankfurt, completed in 2012, was the first in the world to earn LEED Platinum certification and still operates with a PUE below 1.2, thanks to an innovative cooling system. In Haarlem, Netherlands, Iron Mountain runs a data center powered entirely by renewable energy, while its office building uses local solar panels.
Amazon has also entered the picture, signing agreements to support the development of several small modular reactors (SMRs) in Washington and Virginia. – Examples from Germany, the Netherlands and the United States show that energy efficiency is no longer just an operational optimization element, but becomes one of the main factors defining the competitiveness of data centers. The sector is increasingly bold in investing in technologies that were seen as futuristic just a few years ago, such as SMRs or advanced energy recovery systems – added Borowski.
The report also stresses the need to move away from general 'green energy’ purchase declarations toward concrete, measurable actions that ensure data centers are supplied with carbon-free power around the clock. This means matching renewable generation to actual real-time consumption, not just annual accounting balances.
Źródło: wnp.pl, Fot. Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock
