Data Centers Are the New Polluters
U.S. data centers are using more electricity than they need. It takes 34 power plants, each capable of generating 500 megawatts of electricity, to power all of the data centers in operation today. By 2020, the nation
will need another 17 similarly sized power plants to meet projected data center energy demands as economic activity becomes increasingly digital.
Any increase in the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity will result in an increase in carbon emissions. But added pollution isn’t an inevitability, according to a new report on data center energy efficiency from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental action organization.
Nationwide, data centers in total used 91 billion kilowatt-hours of electrical energy in 2013, and they will be using 139 billion kilowatt-hours by 2020 — a 53 percent increase.
This chart shows the estimated power usage (in billions of kilowatt-hours), and the cost of power used, by U.S. data centers in 2013 and 2020, and the number of power plants needed to support the demand. The last column shows carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions in millions of metric tons. (Source: NRDC)
Full article by Patrick Thibodeau, Computerworld
About the Author
Roger Chu is the Marketing Coordinator at GSAmart, the leading GSA sales and marketing partner for technology companies.
