By 2025, data centers will also carry an energy class label like household appliances. The European Union will certify these massive consumers of electricity based on energy efficiency, just as the energy class of refrigerators or washing machines is marked, in order to reduce their negative impact on the environment. Indeed, with the constant increase in the amount of data to be processed and stored, energy consumption in data centers is becoming an increasing challenge for sustainability. It is predicted that by 2030, data centers will account for 3.2 percent of electricity demand in the EU. Globally, it is estimated that digital technologies today consume between five and nine percent of the total amount of electricity. This consumption is expected to increase with the application of artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain technology, which will lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions if appropriate measures are not taken.
No Choice
The European Commission conducted a study on energy-efficient cloud computing technologies and policies for an environmentally friendly cloud market that addresses the issue of increasing energy consumption due to the expansion of these services. It was decided that data centers must become more energy efficient and use more renewable energy sources and become carbon neutral by 2030. This regulation was adopted in July 2021, setting a framework for sustainable investments in data centers and will support the introduction of an innovative, green, and secure cloud.
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As more and more data is stored in the cloud, data centers are becoming a critical point of intersection between the green and digital transitions, making discussions about them increasingly necessary as summers in the European Union become hotter and drier. What will the future hold if data centers are already struggling to operate due to extreme summer heat?!
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By greening cloud computing and electronic communication services and networks, carbon neutrality should be achieved by 2050. However, before this regulation, the first step in energy taming of data centers was the Code of Conduct for Energy Efficiency in Data Centers (CoC) from 2008. This is a voluntary initiative aimed at informing and encouraging data center owners about the need to reduce energy consumption and recommend best practices and energy efficiency targets. But now the European Union leaves no choice: in its green plan, data centers must also become green. Therefore, the real question is what will be the future of data centers that will not be able to implement the green transition, i.e., will not receive certification? For example, climate activists have already issued death sentences for potential data centers.
Banished from the Netherlands
Although Zeewolde, a town near Amsterdam, approved Meta’s plan, formerly Facebook, to build the largest data center in the country from which Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp would serve users across Europe, nothing came of it. Furious activists disrupted Meta’s plans, showing that in the midst of a major energy crisis, climate-conscious citizens do not look favorably on technological infrastructure that largely drains the electrical grid, but also water. Data centers serving applications used by millions of Europeans are hungry for energy and water, which they will need more and more in the future. According to estimates, electricity consumption in data centers will increase by 18.5 percent by 2030 compared to 2018, and the European Commission, in adopting the regulation on the certification of data centers, was guided by the idea that the government should not be in a position to choose between data centers on one side and ensuring sufficient electricity supply for the economy and population on the other.
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With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, data centers are exposed to constant changes to cope with the demands for processing increasing amounts of data. One way to adapt is to implement specialized hardware and software solutions for AI.
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But this will not be simple. Gartner analysts have predicted that 50 percent of data generated in companies will be processed outside traditional data centers or clouds by 2025, and a recent global survey showed that 78 percent of IT decision-makers prioritize moving IT infrastructure into the digital sphere.
Hot-Cold Problems
As more and more data is stored in the cloud, data centers are becoming a critical point of intersection between the green and digital transitions, making discussions about them increasingly necessary as summers in the EU become hotter and drier. What will the future hold if data centers are already struggling to operate due to extreme summer heat?! This summer, two cooling units in Oracle’s data center ceased operations due to very high summer temperatures in the United Kingdom. Google experienced similar problems, and two leading London hospitals had issues with their IT systems, causing several weeks of postponed surgeries and examinations. Very high temperatures and a lack of electricity also raise questions about the safety of data centers, as every degree above the standard for which the data center was designed can mean a loss of 10 to 15 percent of capacity.
In an attempt to save data, employees of data centers in the United Kingdom watered the roofs of cooling units this summer, even though at the same time, in some parts of Europe, there was a water-saving regulation in effect. Electricity and water are two interrelated resources, especially when it comes to cooling. Most of the energy in data centers is used to power servers, but massive facilities also produce heat and need to be cooled.
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It is predicted that electricity consumption in data centers will increase by 18.5 percent by 2030 compared to 2018. Therefore, the European Commission justified the adoption of the regulation on the certification of such centers by stating that the government should not find itself in a situation where it has to choose between data centers and ensuring sufficient electricity supply for the economy and population.
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This requires either energy when using traditional air cooling or water when servers are cooled by evaporating water, which is more energy-efficient. However, building wind farms and solar parks for the benefit of data centers, rather than the local population, does not always sit well with citizens and encourages activism like that in Zeewolde. All of this has led the European Commission to request users to separately disclose indirect greenhouse gas emissions arising from the purchase of data center services and ultimately their certification.
Sustainable and Local
Certification will most likely be passed by all Croatian data centers as some of them already consume green energy. For instance, A1 Croatia has been following global trends for a while, and its data centers are powered exclusively by electricity from renewable sources.
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A1 Croatia’s information security consultant Damir Bujan claims that certification based on energy efficiency will help monitor and improve the energy efficiency of data centers. Companies that manage to obtain certification will be recognized as environmentally responsible and in line with the European Union’s requirements for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This will also encourage companies to adopt energy-efficient technologies and processes to reduce energy consumption and environmental impact. Because this announcement is a step forward in creating a sustainable future and combating climate change.
– There is a possibility that some insufficiently environmentally conscious data centers will seek refuge in third countries with more lenient energy efficiency and environmental protection regulations. However, it should be noted that this will not be a long-term sustainable solution. Indeed, companies are increasingly turning to green initiatives, including reducing energy consumption and minimizing environmental impact, which makes them more competitive and attractive to users. Additionally, many countries are introducing stricter regulations and laws for energy efficiency and environmental protection, says Bujan, adding that sustainability is an inevitable future and companies that do not adapt may face business risks and loss of trust from users and partners.
Condition for Survival
DataBox’s Director of Business Solutions Sector Vladimir Olujić believes that data centers that do not pass the certification test will cease to exist.
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– Such data centers in developed countries will cease to exist because they will simply disappear from the market as they will be of lower quality and less economical for end users. Over time, data center certification will also reach less developed countries, but that is a matter for the distant future, notes Olujić.
According to him, data centers, including DataBox, are adapting in various ways to meet user needs to enable the most efficient storage, management, and processing of data. With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, such centers are exposed to constant changes to cope with the demands for processing increasing amounts of data. One way to adapt is to implement specialized hardware and software solutions for AI, including the use of graphics processing units (GPUs) and specialized AI chips for fast data processing, as well as using scalable architecture. The ability to quickly expand infrastructure is essential for a data center to handle the growing demands for data processing. All of this is achieved through virtualization, containers, and automated orchestration that allows for dynamic capacity adjustments.
Everyday Concern
Olujić adds that the European Union’s announcement of data center certification based on energy efficiency by 2025 is an important and positive initiative that will contribute to reducing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in Europe.
– Rationalizing energy consumption is an everyday concern for anyone trying to manage a data center as efficiently as possible. Otherwise, such centers are already among the largest consumers of energy in the world, and their consumption and emissions will continue to increase in the coming years, especially with the advancement of AI. Therefore, it is extremely important to take steps that would allow for a reduction in their energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, says Olujić.
In addition, he claims that certification based on energy efficiency will encourage data centers to apply best practices in energy efficiency, including the use of advanced cooling and heat management technologies, optimizing space and equipment usage, utilizing renewable energy sources, and many other measures. This initiative will also differentiate quality and responsibly managed data centers from those that some providers keep in unsuitable business premises and homes.
– I want to emphasize that every user who leaves their system room by transferring equipment to colocation or moves to the cloud of a service provider truly helps advance energy efficiency because data centers are incomparably more efficient in supplying IT equipment with electricity and cooling due to scaling and focus on that, explains Olujić, highlighting that the result of the described process is the transfer of much IT equipment and virtualized resources to data centers, where they consume large amounts of energy, but it is not consumed by end users.
