Information Technology

Methodologies for estimating data center environmental impacts

Methodologies for estimating data center environmental impacts

The environmental impact of data centers is currently a topic of much discussion. In the second post of this series we look into the methodologies that are being used to analyse environmental impacts, with a view to create a uniform calculation framework.

Commentary
Reading Time: 27 min.

In the first post of a series dedicated to the measurement of data center environmental footprints we reviewed the conceptual thought frameworks and challenges. The main objective in this second post is to outline current measurement methodologies and document their quantitative prescriptions in mathematical form.

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The big picture around data center environmental impacts

The big picture around data center environmental impacts

The environmental impact of ever larger data centers is currently a topic of heated discussion. In this post we take a step back and look into the overall landscape of environmental reporting of the digital economy footprints, sketching the big picture of what is being calculated and reported and some challenges associated with this task.

Commentary
Reading Time: 31 min.

Concern about the environmental footprint of data center infrastructure is relatively new.1 In the early stages of the sustainability movement the volume of digital infrastructure deployed in data centers was dwarfed by the environmental impact of other industrial sectors (e.g., transport, manufacturing, agriculture etc.). Hence even as milestones such as the Paris Agreement (2015) accelerated worldwide efforts towards a sustainable economy, the Information and Communication Industry (ICT) sector received comparatively little attention.

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