Energy consumption & carbon emissions of data centers

Global energy usage

IEA (2024)

iea.2024.electricity2024 (image) (pg. 31)

Notes: Includes traditional data centres, dedicated AI data centres, and cryptocurrency consumption; excludes demand from data transmission networks. The base case scenario has been used in the overall forecast in this report. Low and high case scenarios reflect the uncertainties in the pace of deployment and efficiency gains amid future technological developments. Sources: Joule (2023), de Vries, The growing energy footprint of AI; CCRI Indices (carbon-ratings.com); The Guardian, Use of AI to reduce data centre energy use; Motors in data centres; The Royal Society, The future of computing beyond Moore’s Law; Ireland Central Statistics Office, Data Centres electricity consumption 2022; and Danish Energy Agency, Denmark’s energy and climate outlook 2018.

EPRI (2024)

Powering Intelligence: Analyzing Artificial Intelligence and Data Center Energy Consumption

https://www.epri.com/research/products/3002028905

IEA (2023)

IEA (2023), Data Centres and Data Transmission Networks, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks, License: CC BY 4.0

Global GHG emissions:

The data centres and data transmission networks1 that underpin digitalisation accounted for around 330 Mt CO2 equivalent in 2020 (including embodied emissions), equivalent to 0.9% of energy-related GHG emissions (or 0.6% of total GHG emissions). Since 2010, emissions have grown modestly despite rapidly growing demand for digital services, thanks to energy efficiency improvements, renewable energy purchases by information and communications technology (ICT) companies and broader decarbonisation of electricity grids in many regions. However, to get on track with the NZE Scenario, emissions must halve by 2030.

Global energy consumption:

Estimated global data centre electricity consumption in 2022 was 240-340 TWh1, or around 1-1.3% of global final electricity demand. This excludes energy used for cryptocurrency mining, which was estimated to be around 110 TWh in 2022, accounting for 0.4% of annual global electricity demand.

Global trends in digital and energy indicators, 2015-2021:

	2015	2022	Change
Internet users	3 billion	5.3 billion	+78%
Internet traffic	0.6 ZB	4.4 ZB	+600%
Data centre workloads	180 million	800 million	+340%
Data centre energy use (excluding crypto)	200 TWh	240-340 TWh	+20-70%
Crypto mining energy use	4 TWh	100-150 TWh	+2300-3500%
Data transmission network energy use	220 TWh	260-360 TWh	+18-64%

table copied 2024-03-05

Masanet et al. (2020)

masanet.etal.2020.recalibratingglobaldata (pg. 2)

In 2018, we estimated that global data center energy use rose to 205 TWh, or around 1% of global electricity consumption. This represents a 6% increase compared with 2010, whereas global data center compute instances increased by 550% over the same time period.

Overview by David Mytton

How much energy do data centers use? · David Mytton

Server: 118W for single socket servers and 365W for two socket servers

Storage:

HDD: 8.6W/disk in 2015, decreasing by 5 % every year
SSD: 6W/disk

Network: 0.06 kWh/GB in 2015, decreasing by 50 % every two years

Infrastructure: Industry average PUE is 1.67 (2019)

Trends

Koomey, J., & Masanet, E. (2021)

koomey.masanet.2021.doesnotcompute (pg. 3)

For example, the tremendous growth in the cloud data-center segment (which includes the world’s largest ‘‘hyperscale’’ data centers) has led some to predict massive future growth in global data-center energy use. Between 2010 and 2018, the workloads hosted by this segment increased by 2,600%, whereas its estimated electricity use increased by 500%. Despite the rapid growth of this segment, the global energy use of all data centers grew far more modestly, rising by less than 10%.

Distribution of power usage

Efficiency

Optimize Server Utilization for Energy Efficiency and Embodied Carbon

Power Usage Effectiveness

Embodied Carbon

Embodied carbon of ICT devices

CO2e emissions of cloud data storage

Estimates of different literature resources (copied from Why is it important to limit infobesity in Microsoft 365? | Thibault Joubert):

Source	Value (for 1 GB)	Scope	Methodology (with French energy mix: 80g CO2e per kWh)
Stanford (2017)	250 g CO2e per year	Storage only	Estimation of 3 kWh per GB
Shift Project (2020)	80 g CO2e per year	Storage only	Estimation of 1 kWh per GB with French “Caisse des Dépots”
Green Cloud Computing (2021)	35g CO2e per year	Storage and datacenter	0.65 W per hour per TB, 6x replication
Negaoctet (2022)	12g CO2e per year	Storage and datacenter	From a Netflix storage analysis
ADEME (?)	0.24 gCO2 per year	Storage and datacenter	Source from Negaoctet ?

Note: the data correspond to the French energy mix which is particularly low in carbon (e.g. United States x6).

Metrics

→ Data Center Sustainability Metrics

Comparison to local data storage

Storage of data locally on a hard drive consumes 3000 times less energy in many scenarios than if you stored it in the cloud (Gerry McGovern)

🔗 References

Isotopp – Data Centers and Energy

Gerry McGovern on Designing a Greener Web

Why is it important to limit infobesity in Microsoft 365? | Thibault Joubert