- Report The claims data centers and the aviation industry represent 3% each of the global carbon emissions
- By 2026, world data centers will use as much electricity as Japan
- Germany demands highly efficient data centers since 2026
The increase in artificial intelligence activity has led to the demand of data centers, and the new research of Sphotonix states that the facilities now represent the same amount of emissions as the global aviation industry.
Now that it represents 3% of global carbon emissions, concern is the AI and IoT will continue to promote the environmental impact of data centers, and by 2030, they could consume up to 13% of the world’s electricity.
Sphotonix says that 149 Zettabytes (ZB) of data were created in 2024; After only four years, this annual figure could be stopped at 394ZB, about 2.6 times more.
Data centers linked to growing emissions
Quantifying the concerns, Sphotonix revealed that data centers currently consume 460TWH per year, but in just 2026, this could double 1,000TWH, which is more or less the same as the total use of energy in Japan. At the end of the decade, these sites could represent 2,500 million metric tons of CO2.
The investigation deepens different types of storage and reveals the HDD storage used for the storage of long -term cold data and the file actually demands more data; To maintain these HDD at low temperatures for the preservation of the data and the health of promoting, large amounts of energy are required. Cold storage and file represent about three fifths of all data stored today.
HDD also tend to have a shorter life than SSDs, which means that they should be copied every seven to 10 years, which occurs at the expense of high energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
“In an increasingly digital world, the environmental impact of data storage is quickly becoming a pressing concern with the respective governments and regulatory agencies involved to enforce sustainability standards,” said Sphotonix science director Peter Kazansky.
Kazansky added that Germany will require new data centers to achieve energy use efficiency of 1.2 or less of next year.
“Reliable data management plays a vital role in addressing energy challenges, allowing the efficient allocation of resources and long -term planning,” Kazansky concluded.
