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Keep in mind that electricity generation itself is only responsible for ~35% of our greenhouse gas emissions (power generation was responsible for 13 Gt CO2 in
by perrygeo 3y ago
Keep in mind that electricity generation itself is only responsible for ~35% of our greenhouse gas emissions (power generation was responsible for 13 Gt CO2 in 2019, globally 37 Gt)
So if we wanted to estimate the global impact of data centers on CO2 emissions, that's about 0.6%. And that's not a perfect calculation as much of the new power capacity is in renewables, thus lower relative emissions. <0.5% would be a better estimate.
So 1/200th of our greenhouse gas problem is caused by data centers. I'll echo some of the other comments in this thread but - damn, that's a pretty good deal considering how much value we get out of it.
[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-co2-status-report-2019/electricity https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-co2-status-report-...
- realreality 3y agoYou’re not counting the embodied emissions of all the hardware inside the data centers. And consider the low lifespan of IT equipment.
- nl 3y agoThe emissions of the production and disposal of this hardware is counted at part of the 99.4% of emissions that aren't data center emissions.
- tetha 3y agoThere are also some german projects to integrate datacenters into the district heating nets. Capturing the waste heat and using it for heating homes allows us to utilize a very large percentage of the electricity pumped into a datacenter one way or another.