igitalization of society and the economy is key to sustainable development, and a clean cloud and green data centers will need to underpin this transformation, according to Alban Schmutz, chairman of Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE). The European Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact—which unified industry and trade associations for cloud infrastructure services and data centers under the common goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2030—represents one of many positive steps in this direction. The pact now represents 90% of Europe’s cloud and data center industries, with 54 members and 22 trade associations, and has set clear industry-wide targets for energy efficiency, clean energy, water efficiency, circular energy, and the circular economy.
Appropriately, leaders in the Asia Pacific region (APAC) are also paying close attention to what unified, scalable, and standardized commitments to sustainability for data centers in this region could achieve. APAC is home to nearly 60% of the global population. However, it is also home to some of the world’s worst air pollution and other markers of environmental degradation—not to mention challenging markets for renewable energy investment. Yet, growing regional demand for data- and technology-driven innovation and sustainable development is undeniable and will be crucial to solving climate challenges across the region.
In Singapore, the data center industry already contributes $2 billion to its economy annually, creating 1.6 million jobs. However, the climate impact of data centers remains a concern. Singapore recently moved towards lifting its ongoing moratorium on new data center construction with a stricter focus on sustainability. Already home to more than 1,000MW of data center capacity, Singapore has strong international and regional network connectivity ensuring further growth. It is also well positioned to lead the way in promoting innovative and sustainable data center design and development regionally.
Japan, too, is leading through domestic policies supporting clean energy adoption and other innovative incentives, including a $7.1 billion initiative launched in 2020, which included 50% subsidies for construction of zero emissions buildings. In China, the National Development and Reform Commission recently announced its intention to construct four data center “mega clusters” to support Beijing and other major coastal centers, acknowledging the energy and cost efficiencies from cloud data centers’ economies of scale.
While the perception in some corners is that data centers’ energy use is on an unchecked trajectory, the reality is that despite exponential growth in Internet and cloud-enabled services,global data center energy consumption has remained essentially flat since 2010. This is a remarkable achievement and is in large part due to massive energy efficiency investments and higher resource utilization in cloud data centers.
Moving computing workloads from on-premise data centers to cloud facilities is a critical area to continue to focus on in APAC. A survey of over 500 enterprises and public sector organizations in the region by 451 Research, found that such a move led to an immediate reduction in energy use and associated emissions by over 78% on average. Another key consideration for sustainable data centers is access to renewable energy, which remains challenging in APAC due to limited availability, undue regulatory complexities, and high costs. 451 Research finds that, when combined with cloud data centers’ already high levels of efficiency, enabling cloud operators in APAC to source 100% renewable energy would reduce IT-workload emissions even further—by up to 93% on average—across the region.
Government and industry will need to work together to enable greater availability and affordability of renewable energy resources, whether produced domestically or imported from neighboring countries. They will also need to work together in accelerating R&D and leverage other promising technologies, such as in shifting to liquid cooling, and/or use of hydrogen fuel cells and other low-carbon energy/storage solutions.
As APAC governments announce increasingly ambitious net zero carbon goals, cloud computing could help drive greater synergies between decarbonizing technologies, clean energy, and a move towards greater energy efficiency in the data center industry. For all of these reasons and more, APAC governments should prioritize the role of cloud computing and sustainable data centers in facilitating the mutually-reinforcing “twin transitions” of digitalization and decarbonization for the region.
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Towards an Asian Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact
ArtScience Museum, Singapore. Photo by Robynne Hu via Unsplash.
June 30, 2022
Green digitization is key to both combating climate change and continued economic growth. The Asia Pacific region has taken important steps towards these goals, moving towards cloud computing could support climate goals, writes Amazon Web Services' Ken Haig.
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igitalization of society and the economy is key to sustainable development, and a clean cloud and green data centers will need to underpin this transformation, according to Alban Schmutz, chairman of Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE). The European Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact—which unified industry and trade associations for cloud infrastructure services and data centers under the common goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2030—represents one of many positive steps in this direction. The pact now represents 90% of Europe’s cloud and data center industries, with 54 members and 22 trade associations, and has set clear industry-wide targets for energy efficiency, clean energy, water efficiency, circular energy, and the circular economy.
Appropriately, leaders in the Asia Pacific region (APAC) are also paying close attention to what unified, scalable, and standardized commitments to sustainability for data centers in this region could achieve. APAC is home to nearly 60% of the global population. However, it is also home to some of the world’s worst air pollution and other markers of environmental degradation—not to mention challenging markets for renewable energy investment. Yet, growing regional demand for data- and technology-driven innovation and sustainable development is undeniable and will be crucial to solving climate challenges across the region.
In Singapore, the data center industry already contributes $2 billion to its economy annually, creating 1.6 million jobs. However, the climate impact of data centers remains a concern. Singapore recently moved towards lifting its ongoing moratorium on new data center construction with a stricter focus on sustainability. Already home to more than 1,000MW of data center capacity, Singapore has strong international and regional network connectivity ensuring further growth. It is also well positioned to lead the way in promoting innovative and sustainable data center design and development regionally.
Japan, too, is leading through domestic policies supporting clean energy adoption and other innovative incentives, including a $7.1 billion initiative launched in 2020, which included 50% subsidies for construction of zero emissions buildings. In China, the National Development and Reform Commission recently announced its intention to construct four data center “mega clusters” to support Beijing and other major coastal centers, acknowledging the energy and cost efficiencies from cloud data centers’ economies of scale.
While the perception in some corners is that data centers’ energy use is on an unchecked trajectory, the reality is that despite exponential growth in Internet and cloud-enabled services,global data center energy consumption has remained essentially flat since 2010. This is a remarkable achievement and is in large part due to massive energy efficiency investments and higher resource utilization in cloud data centers.
Moving computing workloads from on-premise data centers to cloud facilities is a critical area to continue to focus on in APAC. A survey of over 500 enterprises and public sector organizations in the region by 451 Research, found that such a move led to an immediate reduction in energy use and associated emissions by over 78% on average. Another key consideration for sustainable data centers is access to renewable energy, which remains challenging in APAC due to limited availability, undue regulatory complexities, and high costs. 451 Research finds that, when combined with cloud data centers’ already high levels of efficiency, enabling cloud operators in APAC to source 100% renewable energy would reduce IT-workload emissions even further—by up to 93% on average—across the region.
Government and industry will need to work together to enable greater availability and affordability of renewable energy resources, whether produced domestically or imported from neighboring countries. They will also need to work together in accelerating R&D and leverage other promising technologies, such as in shifting to liquid cooling, and/or use of hydrogen fuel cells and other low-carbon energy/storage solutions.
As APAC governments announce increasingly ambitious net zero carbon goals, cloud computing could help drive greater synergies between decarbonizing technologies, clean energy, and a move towards greater energy efficiency in the data center industry. For all of these reasons and more, APAC governments should prioritize the role of cloud computing and sustainable data centers in facilitating the mutually-reinforcing “twin transitions” of digitalization and decarbonization for the region.
