Data centers and the cloud
In 2020, data centers globally devoured between 200–250 TWh of electricity, roughly accumulating to 1-2% of global consumption (Kamiya 2021). This does not include crypto mining, which roughly consumed 100 TWh of electricity in 2020. Data centers and network links are the engine room of the digital economy, providing the backbone of connectivity and the internet as we know it today. Data centers are a very resource-intense operation, and the demand keeps surging, so it is critical to set a path toward a sustainable digital infrastructure.
No matter whether you house your servers, storage, or network equipment in your own data centers, outsource them to a hosting provider, or place them with one of the global cloud hyperscalers such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Oracle, Tencent, or Alibaba, it is probably one of your most energy resource-intense operations. Moving from on-premises to the cloud comes with several business benefits...
