ABC of Carbon Weekly Blog - D is for Data Centres

It has long been suspected that the IT (Information Technology) industry has been a major contributor of CO2 emissions. Gartner - a company that acts as an analyst and adviser to the industry - announced in April 2007 that the IT industry produces 2% of the global CO2 emissions, placing it on par with the aviation industry. Now we know that data centres account for around a quarter of all industry emissions, as reported by Iain Thomson in IT news on 10 October 2007. According to a new report from Gartner, data centres (where companies store information in computers) are not the top producer of carbon emissions, as personal computers (PCs) and monitors account for 40% of all IT industry output. However, the effect of data centres is rising sharply as virtualisation and increased data processing become more important. 'Data centres account for such a large portion CO2 emissions for three main reasons,' said Rakesh Kumar, a research vice president at Gartner. 'There is lack of floor space, a failure to house high-density servers, and increased power consumption and heat generation. These three issues will affect the cost of running a data centre'. The emissions from such centres are rising fast, and Gartner warned that new technologies will add to the load, with microprocessor energy consumption expected to double within the next 10 years. The analyst advocated setting up sustainable IT groups within companies to monitor levels of emissions, establishing a green procurement program, and getting clearer picture of current and future energy costs. Although PCs account for a larger proportion of carbon emissions than data centres, manufacturers are making positive efforts to cut or offset emissions.