Are Data Centers the New Steel Plants of this Generation?

Data Center Pollution - Yes, its a real thing and its a massive problem!

Developing a Strategy to Assess the greenness of your data center should help reducing the carbon footprints. However, only 45% of firms had a program in place to be environmentally friendly when it comes to your web hosting. In addition, of those that did have a carbon reduction strategy, the majority (52%) had no specific targets for it, although a small hard core (9%) aimed to be carbon-neutral by 2017.

Once upon a time, United States and Europe were the largest Steel producers. Today, China is supposed to be the largest steel producing nation on the planet, followed by Japan and the United States. The fact, is China produces almost half of the world's steel contributing towards the biggest crisis “threatening the continuing survival of human societies”. In fact China did a shutdown to almost dozens of steel plants through a winter of 2017-2018 to diminish the out of control Air Pollution in the country up to a certain extent. It is said to be the largest shutdown of steel mills in the history. China is experiencing the problems of an industralized economy, much like that was seen in the United States and Europe, when smog hung heavy in the air over most of the cities. Definitely, world is in the dire need of steel but, that has to be balanced out with the critical importance of clean air and water.

Although, North America and Europe have become less industralized and more uncompromising pollution standards have been put in place, air quality has improved to a great extent and the quality is improved. However, now a big concern which arises is the massive use of fossil fuels and energy usages by Data Centers.

At the same time it may be hard to imagine that how Internet can cause a promising problem to the Earth Planet, one needs to carry out a due diligence to accept that the problem is real and it is growing at a massive rate. The question which arouses and had to be asked is, "Are Data Centers the New Steel Plants of this Generation?"

Let's Look at the Numbers which speaks -

The numbers are attention grabbing and perhaps a bit alarming as below-

• Industry research indicates there are about 9 million data centers across the globe.

• These data centers are using almost 1.9 billion square feet of space.

• These data centers are always running 24-hours each day, every day.

• To stay available, servers are running 100% of the time, even when not in use or when being used very little.

• 90% of worldwide data center server space is used by American companies.

• Data centers account for 10% of all the power used by the Government Sectors.

• There is a data center worldwide for every 100 of its citizens.

• Around 1.79 Billion Social Network Users

• More than 400 Million Cloud Storage Users

While the number of data centers are said to be declining, that number can be a bit ambiguous. More companies are hosting in the cloud, rather than having their own data center. Then there is another concern ahead. That of self-driving cars.

As we get closer and closer to the time where autonomous driving cars and trucks become a reality, it will create an increasing demand for server space as cars communicate with GPS and other vehicles through the internet.

Energy Usage and Data Centers

Consider the power it takes to operate the servers in some 9 million data centers across the planet. Now, think about the other power being used on other electrical powered items like lights and monitors. The biggest user of energy, however, is a critical component to the health and well-being of large servers. It is air conditioning.

Cool air is critical in the smooth operation of computers and servers. Much of the world’s 1.9 billion square feet of data center space needs to be cooled. To make the environmental problem worse is that many countries where these data centers are located still rely heavily on non-renewable energy sources like fossil fuel. You can begin to see why data centers just may be the steel plants of this generation.

The Answer is Green Data Centers

The answer lies in Green Data Centers Services from a company like Web Werks. The data centers are Carbon Neutral contributing towards Global Go-Green concepts.Green data centers don't just save energy, they also reduce the need for expensive infrastructure upgrades to deal with increased power and cooling demands. Web Werks have also started to take the next step and are looking at the entire data center from an environmental perspective. Web Werks Green Data Center is a repository for the storage, management, and dissemination of data in which the mechanical, lighting, electrical and computer systems are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. Since it have clients in over 100 countries in multiple time zones, the server use is more spread out, making our 99.995% uptime guarantee effective use of energy.

The term “green” is used as “the least energy-consuming ways to use devices while ensuring their highest performance”.

WEB WERKS FUTURE GOALS INCLUDE:

Overall reduction in emissions as adjusted for company growth.

Lower PUE and CUE (carbon usage effectiveness) in all owned facilities.

Greater encouragement to take public transit, walk, or bike to work

Data centers would be the 5th largest consumer of energy in the world if they were a country. By increasing efficiency and driving the adoption of renewables, the industry can make a huge difference and demonstrate how green business is good business. Of course, saving energy also saves money. For colocation customers, better use of energy means lower costs, especially as the industry edges towards billing by the kWh. Web Werks Green Data Center can save up to 50% in energy costs compared to an average data center.

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Created on Apr 27th 2018 10:10. Viewed 513 times.

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