Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/938019
6 | THE DATA CENTER JOURNAL www.datacenterjournal.com Rather than showing the data center industry to be a giant shark gobbling up an ever larger piece of the energy (electricity) pie, these data suggest the industry is following the pattern of the broader economy. Aer a major spurt as the Internet took off, growth has leveled to a reasonable level—especially given the quickly increasing role of IT throughout the economy. Moreover, the LBNL forecast for 2015–2020 in Figure 1 assumed "current trends" would prevail. e authors of the report also considered several other scenarios in which, for example, the industry broadly ap- plies best practices. ese scenarios quantify energy-savings potential rather than being forecasts per se, but they show the industry isn't locked into a future of ever increasing energy consumption. Figure 3 shows the comparison. (For more details on each scenario, see the report.) EFFICIENCY: TOO LITTLE OF A GOOD THING, OR TOO MUCH? Given that demand for resources has certainly increased over recent years, the relative flatness of data center electricity consumption means steadily improving efficiency. But if the LBNL report is anywhere near correct, much greater efficiency gains are available to the industry. e situ- ation leads to three important ques- tions: First, what (if anything) should be done to further increase efficiency? Second, who bears the greatest burden of increasing efficiency? And third, are efficiency gains an unadul- terated blessing? e first question is largely a technical one. Companies have increased their data centers' efficiency in numerous ways, ranging from virtualization/consolidation to bet- ter cooling practices (hot/cold-aisle containment, free cooling and so on) to centralization of resources in the cloud (i.e., through large-scale cloud providers). Further diffusion of such practices, along with new technolo- gies, can do even more. Some tech- nologies will be more practical than others, depending on the situation. Not every data center will be able to implement every kind of technol- ogy, and some practices may simply be undesirable in certain cases. But economics will push some efficiency gains as data center operators try to keep pace with the competition and/ or increase their profitability. More to the point is the sec- ond question: who's responsible for greater efficiency? at is, should efficiency simply be the natural outcome of companies competing to Figure 2. Total electricity end use in the U.S., 2000–2016. (Courtesy of the U.S. Information Administration.) Figure 3. Energy-savings opportunity for various data center scenarios, 2015– 2020. (Courtesy of LBNL, United States Data Center Energy Usage Report.)