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Anyone who streams films, posts photos on social media or sends messages pollutes the environment. Because the large data centers behind them are real energy guzzlers. What could help against this?
Digitalization is often seen as a prerequisite for the energy transition because it makes energy savings possible in the building, industry and transport sectors. At the same time, the digitalization of the economy and society is driving the growth of the data center industry – and it consumes a lot of electricity.
Results of several current studies by the Borderstep Institute on the development of the energy requirements of data centers show that their energy consumption has more than doubled since 2010. “Some of the newly built data centers even require more electricity than a major German city,” explains Ralph Hintemann, scientist at the Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability. This also has an impact on the environment.
Powerful Computers use a lot of electricity
Saarland’s universities have extremely powerful computers that are used for complex research calculations. This automatically makes them by far the largest electricity consumers when it comes to the IT infrastructure on the Saarland University campus.
“The high-performance computers on which most of the calculations run consume around three times as much electricity as our workstation computers,” says Christian Wagner, Saar University’s digitalization officer.
15 grams of CO2 per Google search
But it’s not just complex research that requires electricity. A single Google search is responsible for around 15 grams of CO2. Every series that we watch on one of the many streaming services also causes a lot of emissions due to the huge data centers in the background.
“If I compare that with the fact that I used to drive to the video store, I certainly have significantly lower CO2 emissions today,” says Wagner. But you sometimes watch several films in a row in the evening and this advantage disappears again. What is crucial here is that IT technology becomes more sustainable.
“The hardware is getting better and better. You can also see this in your own smartphone, which is becoming more and more powerful and needs to be charged less,” adds Hintemann from the Borderstep Institute. “But the software needs to be upgraded. Data centers could also ensure that they run on green electricity or make better use of their waste heat.”
Use waste heat correctly
An example of this is a Google data center in Frankfurt, explains thermodynamics expert Frank Rückert from the Saar University of Applied Sciences: “There, 1,300 households are heated by the waste heat from the data center. But there are also other options. A process medium is used in a similar way like a heat pump, and you can generate electricity again from the process heat.”
According to the industry association Bitkom, almost a third of German data center capacities are concentrated in Frankfurt am Main. “If the growth forecasts for the data center industry are correct, then in 2035 all households in Frankfurt could theoretically be supplied with waste heat from the data centers,” says Hintemann. There is still a long way to go until then, as this would require the right infrastructure, which does not yet exist.
New editions from 2027
From 2027, new data centers in Germany will be legally required to operate in a climate-neutral manner. According to Bitkom, there are currently almost 50,000 data centers in Germany. Large providers such as Apple and Google are already accounting for climate neutrality. For small data centers it is more difficult, but possible.
The experts agree: With digitalization, energy demand will continue to rise. But in the end, the benefits of digitalization in saving CO2 clearly outweigh the negatives.