scte long read
They faced a serious communication and image problem. According to John Booth, however, three years on this too is changing. “I think they’ve finally realised that their tenure as senior executives in the industry is coming to a very quick end.”
Some impressive, if embryonic environmental initiatives were taking root within boardrooms and in parliaments and while the optimisim about a brighter future was encouraging, there was no denying the situation was deeply alarming. At the time Data Centre Energy Efficiency Consultant John Booth, whom we will meet again later on, told us, “In the UK alone data centres take up 0.79% of energy consumption but that is just commercial. That figure doesn’t include BT telephone exchanges, hospitals, universities, head offices government facilities, retail outlets and leisure facilities. It’s more like 12%. So the number we have globally is completely off. It’s far, far higher.” It is still difficult to establish the exact number of data centres worldwide, because the definition of a data centre varies enormously. However, Brightlio.com estimates a rise of nearly 3,000 data centres since 2021, to 10,978 globally. Some context: In May 2021, 55% of the world’s population was online. It is now 66.2%. That’s a lot of Instagram posts. In 2021 we learned that the older, white, male-dominated culture of data centres was vastly at odds with the young, diverse, Silicon Valley app developers skateboarding to work. Junior engineers from a range of technical backgrounds had found themselves 30 years later running gigantic data centres in remote parts of the planet, embroiled in planning controversies amid tetchy media relations, where their marketing skills were found to be sorely lacking and their outlook dated.
As with any highly contentious subject, establishing hard facts on a national, never mind international level can be difficult. Separating cynical marketing proclamations from hard data is challenging. Dig a bit deeper and uncovering the motivations and agenda behind much of this is bewildering, since with climate change we are also dealing with a highly charged, very 21st century phenomenon: conspiracy theory. As soon as one fact has been established it is dismissed by opposing parties as ‘just weather’, unprovable hocus pocus, a sinister global plot that if you look long enough, right to the far reaches of the Internet, it will eventually lead you to the tinfoil hats of the Flat Earth Society. Getting started with some stats In 2021 there seemed barely any governance or joined up thinking; the landscape a bleak hyperscaler dystopia owned by profiteering tech giants, some of whom were working towards sustainability goals, but not many. There was a wild-west approach to planning, expansion, cooling and ESG, as well as patchy, opaque and subjective data reporting designed to please shareholders and excite the media. These huge, remote businesses appeared to be facilitating our daily lives and bleeding the planet dry while most of us were only dimly aware of their existence. Condemnation from grassroots activists and industry experts was noisy and widespread, but little affirmative action seemed likely in the short term.
In May 2021, 55% of the world’s population was online. It is now 66.2%. That’s a lot of Instagram posts.
May 2024 Volume 46 No.2
17
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online