With data centers expected to consume as much as 20% of the world’s energy within only a few years, the deployment of energy efficient data centers is crucial. Swedish developer of climate-positive data centers EcoDataCenter has taken a global lead in this segment and is now launching the first carbon positive data center in the world, in Falun in central Sweden.
Sweden’s EcoDataCenter, a provider of colocation data center solutions, has designed the world’s first climate-positive data center. After four years of development efforts, EcoDataCenter has managed to create a data center that is integrated with the surrounding energy ecosystem to reuse the heat generated by the data center. Being climate positive means that not only are there no carbon emissions, but that during operation it even promotes the reduction of total carbon emissions.
Carbon-positive operation is achieved through green electricity and using the surplus heat from the center in Falu Energi och Vatten’s local district heating networks and a wood pellet factory. During the warmer months, the surplus energy in the district heating network is used for cooling the data center. The facility will have a total capacity of 1.9 mW and will be put into operation in the autumn of 2018.
The steadily increasing need for processing data in the wake of 5G, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence are what lie behind the expected rise in the energy consumption of data centers. According to Gartner, there will be more than 20 billion connected objects by 2020, a figure that in the opinion of some commentators could increase to a full 100 billion as early as 2025.
Most of us, however, are likely unaware of the fact that our daily digital habits have a serious impact on the environment, according to Lars Schedin, CEO of EcoDataCenter.
Simply put, data centers consist of a large number of data servers that process data, something that uses a lot of energy since the processing in itself requires energy, but also because the servers must be constantly cooled in order to function. Energy consumption constitutes one of the largest operating costs in a data center, and a facility with lower energy consumption will thereby have less of an impact on the environment and offer lower costs — something that is attractive for both data companies and their customers.
