From the CTO’s corner: Simon Gardner, Oper8 Global Group

At the last United Nations General Assembly in New York, world leaders updated their commitments to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets as the world strives to reach net zero by 2050. Those commitments are translating into increased pressure on data centre operators to drive sustainability improvements. That’s because data centres have seen some of the biggest increases in energy demand, largely due to the explosion in AI use.

While data centres accounted for just 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024, according to an International Energy Agency (IEA) report, consumption has grown by 12% per year since 2017, and that’s set to rise even further. The IEA expects that AI requirements will see data centre electricity consumption growing by 15% per year through to 2030, more than four times faster than the growth of total electricity consumption from all other sectors.

That’s leading to greater regulatory pressures as governments increase financial disincentives to limit energy consumption and emission levels, which in turn is driving more aggressive corporate sustainability targets, increasingly stringent procurement requirements from customers, and greater investor scrutiny of organisation’s environmental credentials – amongst others.

So what does that all mean for data centres? We’re seeing the rise of net zero data centres that are leveraging energy and water efficiency, circularity practices and asset utilisation to minimise their direct and indirect GHG emissions.

We wrote about sustainable data centres recently, but net zero data centres take things one step further, with their goal to achieve an overall balance between GHG emissions produced and GHG emissions taken out of the atmosphere.

The hallmark of these data centres is that they are using advanced power, cooling, management and monitoring solutions; sourcing renewable energy and utilising more battery storage; minimising water use; and employing circular equipment lifecycles.

However, this is all very difficult to achieve. Let’s break that down.

Sourcing renewable energy (or building your own renewable generation and storage capabilities) is currently very expensive, although this cost is dropping as countries increase the ratio of renewable energy in the grid. There’s a great data visualisation of this – albeit from 2022 – showing each country’s renewable power percentage. Figures show that these renewable percentages have increased for most nations in the last three years.

Data centre operators don’t always have the luxury of greenfield sites, so in many cases they are having to retrofit existing facilities that were designed for a completely different operating paradigm. Facilities that have operated successfully for years can’t transform into net zero data centres overnight. We’ve seen that particularly with old telephone exchanges or outdated edge sites that were never designed for that purpose.

One way Oper8 Global Group is addressing these net zero challenges is through our modular and micro data centre designs. For a start, that’s enabling us to more efficiently retrofit existing facilities by deploying the latest hardware without having to refit the entire site with new power and cooling infrastructure. That includes the implementation of more efficient direct-to-chip solutions and other advanced cooling methods.

Building with modular components in the factory before shipping to site means we are far more efficient in the construction process, while minimising waste. By building in our factory, we have  a controlled and measurable environment, and we are taking steps to improve our own sustainability.

In the factory we can run tests on the completed units, either to ensure we can meet expected performance targets before the data centre is commissioned, or to provide accurate benchmarks so that operators can plan in advance what they need to offset to achieve net zero outcomes.

Taking a modular approach also allows us to maximise the reuse of components, aligning with data centre operators’ circulatory practices. For our micro data centres, it’s possible to reuse almost everything, either by redeploying the complete unit to a new site or by repurposing the components in another micro, prefabricated or modular DC. It’s more difficult to reuse the frames and wall panels in our modular DCs because they are custom designed and installed, but most of the internal components can be redeployed.

So how seriously should we plan for net zero data centres? The reality is that, as an industry, we need to be a lot more rigorous in understanding both holistically and incrementally the environmental impact from building and operating our data centres, because there will be numerous sustainability expectations or obligations that we will need to meet now and in the future.

We also need to be aware that the immediate demand for AI threatens to overwhelm our non-renewable resources if we don’t take steps now to alleviate that impact.

That said, there is a silver lining in all of this. There are more efficient AI training and inference models being developed, and AI as a technology is itself enabling more sustainable practices – both in the data centre directly and in the wider world. For example, in a recent article ‘Could net-zero AI become a reality?’, PwC cites how AI can be applied to predict when rooms will get hot and automatically pre-cool them. In a broader application, PwC points to AI optimising the routes of commercial aircraft and cargo ships; and refining the composition of cement and the processes used to make it.

Taking all this into account, as a data centre operator, if we can measure and quantify the environmental benefit being generated in a broader context by the AI applications we are enabling, we can potentially use this to offset the environmental impact of our data centre.

It’s all food for thought. Contact me if you’d like to discuss further.