Data centres fuelling climate change?

The intensive power requirements needed to run and cool data centres now account for almost a quarter of global CO2 emissions from information and communications technology, according to analyst Gartner.

The main issue is not the current amount of data-centre emissions but the fact they are increasing faster than other carbon emissions, the company said in a research advisory.

Speaking prior to Gartner's Data Center Summit this month, Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner, said: "Although the figure compares favourably with the 40 per cent of emissions from PCs and monitors, it is much more concentrated and rising more quickly."

Despite widespread publicity around the issue, not enough attention has been paid to reducing data-centre emissions, Kumar said. "Organisations should aim to keep their data-centre CO2 emissions constant," he said. "This will help curb excessive data-centre growth and act as a counterbalance to deploying energy-inefficient hardware."

The main reasons for the scale of current emissions are a lack of floor space, a failure to house high-density servers and increased power consumption and heat generation, according to Kumar.

The analyst also highlighted related cost concerns. "We predict energy consumption of microprocessors alone will rise for the next 10 years," he said.

In a separate research advisory published this week, Gartner said that green technology is now number one in the company's rating of industry issues. Number two on the list is unified communications, followed by business process modelling in third.

Metadata management - the process of handling data in a way that makes issues such as integrating customer and product information easier, thus helping techniques such as service-oriented architecture - was in fourth place.

Colin Barker writes for ZDNet UK