The Green Cost of Data
So what's the picture of? A car plant? A plastics factory? Well, no, it's actually a data centre roof. As more and more businesses require serious computing power to run, so demand for data centres is increasing. And, of course, data centres are key to e-commerce and most of what we do online.
But that growth isn't without its costs. Big data centres house hundreds of powerful computers and those computers require a lot of electricity. They also, like all electrical processes, generate heat and it takes an a significant amount of energy to remove that heat and keep the computers cool.
Consuming a lot of electricity has an environmental cost. Consultants McKinsey have issued a report warning that data centres could, by 2012-13 overtake aviation as a cause of greenhouse emissions
To get a sense of how centres consume energy I visited a data centre in the company of its operations manager. You can hear that interview below.
While there is a business case as well as an environmental case for decreasing the energy consumed by data centres there's a debate over whether or not data centres should be regulated to ensure they are as efficient as possible. We received this statement from DEFRA
We know that there are concerns about emissions from data warehousing [data centres] and ICT [Information and communication technology]. We're looking at this in a number of ways, including through the Carbon Reduction Commitment, which will start in 2010. The CRC is a mandatory emissions trading scheme that will cover around 5000 businesses and public sector bodies that use a lot of energy but aren't currently in an emissions trading scheme. It will include organisations from the big banks, supermarkets and hotel chains to government departments and local authorities -- as well as large data warehousing companies
So data centres are part of a strategy covering all businesses that use a lot of energy. And it's worth pointing out that some activities data centre's support, like online shopping and banking, can save emmissions by reducing travel etc.
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I believe Google has done quite a lot of work on reducing both the hardware costs and the energy requirements of its data centres. I'm sure you will find more information on the web.
In general, modern computers and processors incorporate power-saving features - when fully activated these shut-down or slow down parts of the processor or system which are not required, millisecond by milisecond. This helps to ensure the overall power consumption is proportional to the actual computational workload. Energy-use can be reduced by writing software in such a way that these power-saving features work effectively.
Furthermore, efficient software which accomplishes the required task with the least computational effort will also go a long way to reducing data-centre power consumption. Energy use is in the hands of those who write the programs and design the data-structures. The exponential increase of computing-power and storage in recent years has not provided much incentive for efficient-coding.
As an aside, an interesting calculation would be how much extra power across the word is used by resource-hogging anti-virus software on all the work and home computers.
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We certainly do have a problem with data centre energy consumption. But as we all seem to crave the need for more information, greater speed and wider band widths, how can we at the same time reduce the energy required to cool the servers that operate these systems?
We are, as ever, following the pattern of the USA. There, a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that the power consumption of data centres doubled between 2000 and 2005, and now accounts for 1.2% of American electricity consumption, though other estimates put the figure at 4%." (External source)
The cost of energy is rising at an alarming rate, and is set to rise another 50% in the next two years, if the oil price is anything to go by. Some corporations estimate that around 5-7% of their real estate use 75-80% of their total energy bill. Data centres are a focus target for corporate management for energy reduction measures.
Corporations may even think that outsourcing these services to independent facilities may be the solution to there Corporate Social Responsibility targets but this is just covering up the effect that business is having on our environment.
These independent data centres now charge their space out not by band width but by kW/m2. A current ball park cost to clients of 2000 watts per m2 and each commercial kW/hr is currently around 8p it can be seen that these sites are considerable energy consumers and cost centres.
If anybody thinks that we can reduce the need for these energy guzzlers they are mistaken. We believe that our demand for information can only get greater . Whilst the IT community may be charged with making more and more efficient servers, they should immediately be looking at how they can save on the Air Conditioning, which consumes around 50% of the total Data Centres energy usage.
The reductions found may not be directly put to the benefit of the environment, but will more likely be used to increase the amount of information that can be passed through the building by diverting the energy saved to more operational servers.
However this will reduce the need to erect more of these buildings, and thus lead to a total reduction on raw materials and other inefficient air conditioning systems needed. This adds up to an even greater saving than first employed.
Gareth Fox
Efficient Air HVAC Energy Saving
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