Context and Challenges

Datacenters consume a lot of energy 259 259 Terawatt hour in Europe by 2020, or 1.7% of global electricity consumption (source: European Commission).

Energy Intensive Buildings

For example:

• Typical datacenter consumes 10 to 100 times more energy per square meter than a standard office building.
• The consumption of a 10,000 m² datacenter is equal to that of a city of 50,000 inhabitants.
• Over 10 years, the operating cost of a datacenter is equivalent to its installation cost.
• The electricity bill represents 10 to 15% of the operating cost.

A Growing Ecological Footprint

The ecological footprint of datacenters continues to grow in the next 10 years, it is estimated that there will be 30 times more data (90% of which will be unstructured) and 1,000 times more servers.

At this rate, energy requirements could double within 5 years. Reducing the carbon footprint and acting on the energy efficiency of datacenters is therefore a necessity in order to reduce consumption and costs.