Trends in Data Centre Energy Consumption under the European Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency

TLDR

Climate change is a major challenge, and the ICT sector—including data centres—contributes about 2 % of global CO₂ emissions, with data centres having the fastest growing carbon footprint, yet recent estimates of their total energy consumption and efficiency in Europe are lacking. This study evaluates and analyzes current trends in energy consumption and efficiency of EU data centres using data from companies participating in the European Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency programme. The authors analyze data submitted by participating companies in the European Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency programme, a voluntary initiative established in 2008, to assess energy consumption and efficiency trends. The analysis reveals that the average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of participating facilities is decreasing annually, indicating that voluntary initiatives can effectively address climate and energy concerns.

Abstract

Climate change is recognised as one of the key challenges humankind is facing. The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector including data centres generates up to 2% of the global CO2 emissions, a number on par to the aviation sector contribution, and data centres are estimated to have the fastest growing carbon footprint from across the whole ICT sector, mainly due to technological advances such as the cloud computing and the rapid growth of the use of Internet services. There are no recent estimations of the total energy consumption of the European data centre and of their energy efficiency. The aim of this paper is to evaluate, analyse and present the current trends in energy consumption and efficiency in data centres in the European Union using the data submitted by companies participating in the European Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency programme, a voluntary initiative created in 2008 in response to the increasing energy consumption in data centres and the need to reduce the related environmental, economic and energy supply security impacts. The analysis shows that the average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of the facilities participating in the programme is declining year after year. This confirms that voluntary approaches could be effective in addressing climate and energy issue.