As the AI boom accelerates, unanswered questions remain around how to build more data centers sustainably. In this article, IDTechEx explores the crucial role of low-carbon power, energy efficiency, and reducing supply chain emissions.
The AI boom continues. With trillions of dollars pledged to the accelerating data center build-out, an unprecedented pressure is being placed on power grids. IDTechEx's new "Sustainability for Data Centers 2027-2037: Green Technologies, Market Forecasts, and Players" report answers burning questions such as: How will new GWs of power capacity come online for data centers? How can the energy efficiency of data centers improve as rack density and chip thermal design power skyrockets? And how will data centers become more sustainable in a landscape where AI is increasingly scrutinized for its negative environmental impact?
Over the next decade, data center power demand will triple and CO2 emissions will double globally. Source: IDTechEx's Sustainability for Data Centers 2026-2036: Green Technologies, Market Forecasts, and Players report.
How will new GWs of power capacity come online for data centers?
Availability of electricity has become a major bottleneck for data center construction, with grid interconnection queues lasting years in several regions. Competition for new electricity generation will create significant demand for low-carbon power and fossil fuels alike over the next 10 years. In the short term, off-grid gas turbines have been the favoured solution for jumping ahead, as evidenced by xAI's Colossus 2. However, the economics of new solar power installations paired with battery storage are becoming increasingly competitive, opening the door for sustainable microgrids.
The investment landscape for emerging clean energy technologies has bloomed thanks to the growth in AI. For example, companies developing enhanced geothermal systems have entered agreements with hyperscalers to power future data centers, such as Sage Geosystems' partnership with Meta. For hydrogen fuel cells, Ballard and Plug Power have both demonstrated the ability of PEMFCs to replace diesel generators for back-up power with key data center players such as Microsoft and Vertiv. There is even interest in rocketing data centers into space to optimize the unlimited solar power available - with active players including SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Starcloud.
However, at the grid-scale, it is the maturity of wind, solar, and nuclear power that will ultimately deliver the most low-carbon electricity to data centers in the next decade. The development of nuclear power will be especially interesting due to the rise of SMRs (small modular reactors). Data center hyperscalers have bet on several SMR designs including liquid metal fast reactors and high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. According to IDTechEx's "Sustainability for Data Centers 2027-2037: Green Technologies, Market Forecasts, and Players" report, emerging nuclear SMRs (small modular reactors) could be providing up to 15% of data center power by 2037.
How can the energy efficiency of data centers improve as rack density and chip thermal design power skyrockets?
In data centers, increased AI workloads have resulted in chips are becoming more powerful, and the power density of racks continues to increase. This is triggering fundamental shifts in data center design - such as transitions to liquid cooling (direct-to-chip or immersion) and 800VDC architecture - to deliver improved performance and higher energy efficiency. As data centers become bigger and more power-hungry, the operational and environmental benefits of improving energy efficiency grows.
Most existing policies surrounding data center decarbonization, such as the EU Energy Efficiency Directive, relate to the energy efficiency (more specifically, the PUE - power use efficiency) of data centers. As the data center sector transitions from traditional air cooling to direct-to-chip liquid cooling, bringing reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, water usage, and energy consumption, trade-offs in other metrics such as cost and complexity must be considered. Furthermore, with the constant emphasis of energy efficiency from leading component suppliers such as NVIDIA, AMD, and Infineon, the energy efficiency on the componentry level (e.g., GPUs, CPUs, memory modules, power converters, etc.) is also seeing growth.
How will data centers become more sustainable in a landscape where AI is increasingly scrutinized for its negative environmental impact?
Beyond low-carbon electricity and energy efficiency, data centers also have a significant carbon footprint further down the supply chain. These Scope 3 emissions actually represent the majority of CO2 emissions from data centers. IDTechEx forecasts data center CO2 emissions will exceed 0.8 gigatonnes per annum by 2036, with Scope 3 emissions playing a large part.
Because Scope 3 emissions are indirect emissions in a company's value chain that are not caused by the company itself, it can be hard for data center players to tackle scope 3 emissions.
IDTechEx's "Sustainability for Data Centers 2027-2037: Green Technologies, Market Forecasts, and Players" report explores three different ways for companies to reduce scope 3 emissions: (1) Purchasing carbon credits (specifically carbon dioxide removal credits) to counteract hard-to-avoid CO2 emissions, (2) Using low-carbon materials in data center construction (green concrete, green steel, and timber) either physically or through environmental attribute certificate purchases (book and claim), and (3) Choosing IT hardware with lower embodied/manufacturing carbon over the lifetime of a data center.
For more information on this report, including downloadable sample pages, please visit www.IDTechEx.com/SDC, or for the full portfolio of research available from IDTechEx, see www.IDTechEx.com.
