Can there be a Zero-Carbon Data Center?

 Well, there is! Verne Global, a Data Center located in Iceland is Zero-Carbon as it is powered by 100% renewable energy sources (Geo-thermal, Hydro-electric plants) and cooled by the natural cool air available in abundance in Iceland. No cutting of trees, no burning fossil fuels and no carbon emissions. Just 100% Green.

The Data Center industry has been using a lot of energy without the slightest care about the environment. As switches and servers become more powerful and data centers grow in size, the amount of power used by them and the inefficiencies caused due to unnecessary/improper usage of power and resources has gone totally unchecked. As data usage increases across the world, data centers are going to be more in demand and the energy used by them is going to increase exponentially.

Climate change, global warming and pollution are serious issues facing us and we are mindlessly involved in activities that will accelerate them. Are we ever concerned about the amount of power utilized by our servers, switches, air-conditioning and other equipment in a data center? Are we measuring the power consumed by individual devices and looking at options that will make them utilize power more efficiently? Do we give importance to power efficiency, while selecting network equipments?

Have we considered powering our data center using renewable sources of energy (like solar panels, micro wind turbines, etc) or at least utilizing these technologies as back-up? Have we considered buying power from a renewable energy supplier (like wind farms)?

While all of us are not lucky enough to be located in Iceland, we can at least do our bit by making our data centers more power efficient and greener.

Updates:

  • Facebook is currently building a huge 27,000 sq. mt data center in Lulea, Sweden that will be powered using 100% renewable energy (Hydro-electric power)
  • Rackspace has a data center in UK that is fully powered using renewable energy
  • Google has entered into a long-term Power Purchase Agreement with local wind energy generation plants in a few areas in the US where it has data center operations. They will buy 100 MW of power generated by wind mills, every year
  • A few companies like i/o Data centers (4.5 MW), Apple (20 MW), Mcgraw-Hill Publishing (14 MW) have implemented or have announced plans to utilize the electricity generated by solar panels/solar arrays installed in their data center facilities
  • Akamai has started to disclose its Green House Gas emissions (released by its IT operations) in CO2/Mbps, which enables transparency and encourages the company to implement (ongoing) methodologies to reduce that figure
  • Around 56% of all the energy demands of Yahoo! is estimated to be provided by renewable energy sources, thanks to its data center facilities in Washington State and New York that are powered by Hydro power. The company uses a unique ‘Chicken coop’ design to cool servers/other equipments in their data centers using the cool air outside, thereby decreasing their electricity consumption considerably

Source/reference: Report by Greenpeace called, “How clean is your cloud” published during April, 2012.

excITingIP.com