Trends in Data Centre Energy Consumption under the European Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency

Maria Avgerinou, Paolo Bertoldi and Luca Castellazzi
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Maria Avgerinou: European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Directorate C-Energy, Transport and Climate, Via E. Fermi 2749, I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy
Paolo Bertoldi: European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Directorate C-Energy, Transport and Climate, Via E. Fermi 2749, I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy
Luca Castellazzi: European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Directorate C-Energy, Transport and Climate, Via E. Fermi 2749, I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 10, 1-18

Abstract: Climate change is recognised as one of the key challenges humankind is facing. The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector including data centres generates up to 2% of the global CO 2 emissions, a number on par to the aviation sector contribution, and data centres are estimated to have the fastest growing carbon footprint from across the whole ICT sector, mainly due to technological advances such as the cloud computing and the rapid growth of the use of Internet services. There are no recent estimations of the total energy consumption of the European data centre and of their energy efficiency. The aim of this paper is to evaluate, analyse and present the current trends in energy consumption and efficiency in data centres in the European Union using the data submitted by companies participating in the European Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency programme, a voluntary initiative created in 2008 in response to the increasing energy consumption in data centres and the need to reduce the related environmental, economic and energy supply security impacts. The analysis shows that the average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of the facilities participating in the programme is declining year after year. This confirms that voluntary approaches could be effective in addressing climate and energy issue.

Keywords: Data Centre Energy Efficiency; PUE; voluntary agreements; energy efficiency policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

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