Data centre electricity usage jumps 56 per cent
Green IT news – by Ann Elise Taylor
2nd August 2011
Despite a smaller than expected increase in data centre electricity use between 2005 and 2010, the high-density computing facilities still account for a staggering proportion of global electricity use, a new report reveals.
According to '
Growth In Data Centre Electricity Use 2005 to 2010’, power used by
data centres worldwide jumped 56 per cent from 2005 to 2010 – a less daunting increase than the twofold rise that occurred between 2000 and 2005.
However, electricity use in global data centres was still responsible for between 1.1 per cent and 1.5 per cent of the world’s electricity consumption during the five-year period the report takes into account.
Ali Moinuddin, marketing and communications director at Interxion and communications co-chair of the Green Grid, an
IT business consortium promoting efficiency, said he "wasn’t surprised by the estimate in today’s report." As information and communications technology (ICT) becomes increasingly more important worldwide, an increase in energy consumption isn’t unexpected, Moinuddin said.
However, the Green Grid insists reductions in data centre electricity use are both necessary and possible through coordination with green organisations and new systems of measuring facilities’ efficiencies.
"Data centre operators need to work with local and international government bodies, industry associations like the European Commission, the UK’s Carbon Reduction Commitment and the Green Grid to better understand the role they can play in reducing the carbon footprint associated with their ICT infrastructure," Moinuddin said. "As an industry, we need to move beyond just considering PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness), instead looking at Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) too."
Green metrics
These metrics, developed and announced earlier this year, aim to give data centre managers a more comprehensive idea of their facilities’ environmental impact by incorporating water and carbon sustainability measures into the older PUE formula.
To offer data centre operators a sense of direction regarding sustainability and these measurements, the Green Grid has developed a Data Centre Maturity Model, Moinuddin said. The guide, published this year, offers advice on how to improve the
energy efficiency and sustainability of data centres, as well as clear metrics and guidance on what organisations should do to make the whole ICT infrastructure more environmentally friendly.
GoogleSome data centres have already made moves to become greener. According to information illustrated in the report, high-efficiency equipment has allowed Google to keep energy consumption low, with less than one per cent of global data centre electricity use attributable to its facilities in 2010. Interxion’s data centres now use 100 per cent renewable energy, as well as green technologies such as cold aisle containment, a release from the company said.
According to Moinuddin, taking steps to make data centres energy efficient makes both environmental and business sense.
"We know that in order to reduce the environmental impact of IT, the green data centre needs to be at the heart of the whole movement towards sustainable computing," Moinuddin said.
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