In 2015 the number of internet-connected devices was around 10 billion, this number is expected to increase to a total of 34 billion in 2020. These devices already revolutionized the world we are living in as they facilitated communication, made real life information available immediately and had an enormous impact on productivity. However, recently conducted research by Greenpeace revealed that if the internet would be a country it would have the 6th highest power consumption in the world. This has the foundation that all the data needs energy to be generated. In the finance metropolis Frankfurt data centers have a higher consumption than the international airport.
A big problem is that most of the energy is not received from renewable energy sources. Amazon web services got into criticism in 2014 because a study characterized it as the least sustainable among all leading cloud providers with only 13.5% of its energy from renewable sources and no foreseeable renewable energy commitments. Shortly after, Amazon announced a long-term commitment to 100% renewable energy; however, due to experts it is not expected to be achieved in the close future.
Nevertheless, there are promising solutions for the unprecedented increase in the need for increased storage and data center facilities that are scalable, energy efficient and environmentally responsible. The “Leftal Mine Center” in Norway demonstrates a perfect example of how to turn the problem into an opportunity. The center is exclusively powered by renewable energy and gets cooled by water from a nearby fiord, a world leading cooling system. Furthermore, they designed the center to have large spaces with unique scalability. The facility is expected to have an incomparably good power usage effectiveness of 1,15 which is described as the ratio of total amount of energy used by a computer data center facility to the energy delivered to computing equipment.
The example proves that solutions to the increased demand in interconnectivity and the resulting increase in data generation are available. Now it is up to the leading IT companies to make use of them.
https://presseportal.zdf.de/pressemitteilung/mitteilung/planet-e-im-zdf-ueber-stromfresser-internet/
https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Rechenzentrum-in-norwegischem-Bergwerk-3714484.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectiveness
