Carbon
Impact on Net Zero
Digital waste is far from carbon neutral; it consumes significant electricity and resources
The hidden footprint
Digital Waste has a substantial environmental footprint. Data centres are driving up emissions with their concentrated around-the-clock electricity demands (supported largely by non renewable energy sources) and substantial carbon emissions through the rapid manufacturing and replacement of high-density AI hardware. Let's find out how they contribute.
Data centres and emissions
Most of the internet feels weightless. But every email you send, file you store, video you stream, model you train, or dashboard you refresh runs on physical infrastructure: data centres. Global emissions from digital technology were placed at 3.7% of total greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. This places emissions from ICT above emissions from the aviation industry (about 2.4%).
Are data centres bad for the environment?
In the digital age data centers are the backbone of our connected world, in fact you're using one right now to browse the web.
But as our tech advances we're becoming more and more reliant on them, building more centres to process more data, we're finding that it has a substantial cost to our environment and quality of life.
Where do the emissions come from?
The carbon footprint of a data center is affected by three factors:
➡️ Scope 1 (direct): emissions from sources you own or control (e.g., on-site fuel use)
➡️ Scope 2 (indirect energy): emissions from the generation of purchased electricity/heat/cooling you use
➡️ Scope 3 (value chain): other indirect emissions up and down your value chain
A breakdown: data centre emissions
Hardware Lifespan
Hardware lifespans: Manufacturing server chips, motherboards, and lithium batteries for data centres is a carbon-intensive process. Typically this hardware is replaced every 3 to 5 years repeating the process more than 6 times over 30 years.
Back-up Generators
Data centres require uninterrupted power, so they keep industrial generators on site incase of blackouts. Generators are routinely tested - directly burning fossil fuels on-site.
Refrigerant Leaks
Some data centres run air conditioning to keep servers cool but if not properly maintained refrigerant can leak out. These gases are much worse than CO2 for global warming.
Cooling Infrastructure
Cooling infrastructure: Massive amounts of electricity are required to run fans, pumps, and water chillers that keep the server rooms from overheating.
Daily Operations
The vast majority of a site's electricity goes directly into keeping the processors, AI GPUs, storage drives, and networking switches continually running.
Carbon in Construction
Carbon in construction: Data centre constuction construct generates an immense amount of industrial carbon before the facility even switches on its first server.
Logistics
Simply shipping the required components for data centres adds heavy logistical carbon emissions.
Addressing emission concerns
Most studies focus on Scope 2 (emissions from electricity and cooling) often failing to address Scope 1 and 3 concerns. Many people don’t realise the sheer scale of backup power required for data centers. These facilities must operate 24/7, and so to prevent downtime, they rely on a large number of diesel generators as a failsafe during power disruptions.
While a small data center may only house a handful of backup generators, larger projects—including those being built to power AI—can have dozens. For instance, Quantum Loophole’s Aligned Data Centers proposed installing 168 diesel generators capable of delivering 504 MW of power - it's a lot of power, and a lot of emissions.
Carbon emissions and AI
AI is growing in just about every industry, but it comes with a significant environmental cost. AI models, especially those based on deep learning, require vast amounts of computational power to process and analyse data.
Training AI models can emit as much carbon as five cars over their entire lifespan. This surge in demand is driving an increase in data center emissions because of the required energy consumption. In 10 years UK ICT will consume around 10% of the UK's total electricty — doubling what it is today. Currently around 53% of this energy comes from non-renewable sources (fossil fuels, nuclear), which release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, AI is quickly becoming a major contributor to climate change.
Impact on our health
Living directly next to a data centre can be harmful. Diesel exhaust from the backup generators contains fine particles that can cause health problems for people who are exposed frequently and at high enough levels. When people inhale polluted air, particulates embed in their lungs and bloodstreams, causing heart and lung disease. These generators emit significant amounts of particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), and carbon dioxide (CO₂)—pollutants that degrade air quality, contribute to climate change, and pose serious health risks to nearby communities.
Carbon
4.64 million tonnes
Per year
Storing all that digital data has a significant environmental impact. The carbon footprint of digital infrastructure is expected to grow by 30% over the next five years. [Source – The UK Green Building Council]
Making data centres efficient
Data centers are essential infrastructure in the digital age, but the way they are currently designed makes them significant contributors to carbon emissions. But there are options for helping data centers mitigate their impact on the climate immediately and in the long term.
Data centres must integrate renewable energy, improve AI model efficiency, and explore new cooling technologies to reduce water usage. Without these changes, the future of AI may come at an unacceptably high environmental price. The ICT industry has the potential to balance innovation with environmental responsibility.
Data centres & renewables
There are already new data centres being developed which aim to reduce their environmental impacts. For example a redevelopment project in west London is set to use waste heat from a data centre to supply low-carbon heating to 4,000 homes. And in the Nordics, similar projects use waste heat from data centers for public infrastructure. Finland, Sweden, and Norway are demonstrating that the same heat driving GPUs can also heat cities, these data centres are powered by renewable electricity, thus reducing costs and emissions.
A a joint effort between HiCloud Technology and China Communications Construction have launched the world’s first wind-powered underwater datacentre off the coast of Shanghai. This data centre uses 20% less power than it's land based counterparts. All of these initiatives are aimed at reducing the environmental impacts of data centres.
Net zero data centres
While data centers power our digital lives at a massive environmental cost, tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Oracle are attempting to transform them into climate solutions. This video explores the future of green cloud infrastructure, breaking down real-world strategies like AI-powered cooling, carbon-aware computing, and fuel cells used to achieve carbon-negative operations.
2035 Forecast
Impact on:
Read more about the impact of digital waste on our environment, water, the grid and other resources.
The impact of AI
AI is already being used across UK, from big business, local councils to policing and the NHS. But without clear oversight and clean digital operations, the risks will grow.
Data centres and our water resources
The massive cooling demands of data centres processing our digital waste consume billions of litres of fresh water daily, heavily straining local watersheds and intensifying global water scarcity.
The hidden carbon footprint
Digital waste is far from carbon neutral; it consumes significant electricity and resources.
The relentless expansion of data centres to process our digital waste is placing an unprecedented strain on electricity grids and consuming vast amounts of water for cooling, significantly driving up the global carbon footprint.
