Dirty clouds: Data centers waste billions of watts of electricity

Up to 90 percent of the energy used to house the data for the world's websites is simply wasted, according to a report issued by The New York Times.

|
Faith Cathcart/The Oregonian/AP/File
This April 2011 file photo shows a Facebook data center in Prineville, Ore. Data center operators are under increasing pressure by governments and environmental groups to reduce waste.

While much of the world focuses on reducing emissions from automobiles, some of the world’s biggest energy wasters are able to fly under the radar.

Enter the modern data center.

Housing the data and connection protocols for the world’s websites, all of which need to be available 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, up to 90 percent of the energy consumed in data centers is simply wasted, according to a report issued by The New York Times following a year-long investigation. Added to this consumption is the use by data centers of banks of generators in the case of a main power grid failure, a system that relies on diesel and releases exhaust. (See also: Why Energy Efficiency and Buildings Don’t Mix)

Overall, the report estimates that data centers worldwide use a whopping 30 billion watts of electricity, equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants, with the United States accounting for about one third of that number.

While they do often escape notice in comparison to more traditionally identified polluters like cars, data centers are becoming increasingly visible to watch dog groups such as the Toxic Air Contaminant Inventory, a California state government initiative that lists big polluters.

“It’s staggering for most people, even people in the industry, to understand the numbers, the sheer size of these systems,” said Peter Gross, a data center designer. “A single data center can take more power than a medium-sized town.”

With data centers popping up all over the globe — the number of worldwide facilities grew from 432 in 1998 to 2,094 in 2010 — operators are under increasing pressure by governments and environmental groups to better investigate solutions with an eye towards implementing them in the near future.

Unfortunately, given the complexities of the problem and the potential costs of re-equipping a data center with new energy technology, no one operator is yet willing to take the lead.

“This is an industry dirty secret, and no one wants to be the first to say mea culpa,” the report quotes an unnamed industry senior executive. “If we were a manufacturing industry, we’d be out of business straightaway.”

Source: Data Centers Responsible for Wasting Tremendous Amounts of Electricity

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Dirty clouds: Data centers waste billions of watts of electricity
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2012/0925/Dirty-clouds-Data-centers-waste-billions-of-watts-of-electricity
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe