Venture Beat
Summary
As more of the world’s population becomes connected, the internet protocol (IP) traffic will skyrocket, increasing the utilization of data centers – which see most of the world’s traffic and big data pass through – as well as the electricity needed to run them (produced primarily in coal-fired plants).
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global data centers already consume approximately 200-250 TWh of electricity, contributing to 0.3% of global CO2 emissions every year. This is more than the national energy consumption of some countries and around 1% of the global electricity demand. By 2025, with the increase in IP traffic and big data, these data factories are expected to consume one-fifth of the world’s power supply, making the problem much worse.
“The majority of the energy demand comes from powering the servers that process the data, but they, in turn, produce heat and need to be cooled,” Michael Strouboulis, business development director for digital infrastructure at Danfoss, told VentureBeat. “This cooling also requires a lot of energy and generates significant excess heat – most of which is currently being admitted into the surrounding environment,”
“The heat produced by data centers can serve as a new resource for an energy cluster, an integrated heating source, or as a source for a steam system which are all part of local district energy systems (which collects and generates heat for dispersion to a nearby campus or entire municipality),” said Baruch Labunski, president at RankSecure. “More than 940 district energy systems exist in the U.S. so any of them are suitable for garnering a new energy source like data center heat. This could help many local communities reduce energy costs and provide for additional energy needs as the city grows without leaving a major footprint on the environment.”
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