ALTERNATIVE FUELS
DATA CENTRES
“ Solar is likely the strongest candidate for supplying sustainable energy to data centres in the long term ”
— Fredrik Forslund , Blancco
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And he is adamant that the industry should get it right . “ It has never been more important for data centre leaders to address the challenges presented by environmental conditions ,” he says . “ Not only does the sector have a responsibility to do its bit to reduce climate change , but it will be critical to its future success .”
But liquid cooling is “ not a magic bullet for the data centre industry ”, according to Mark Fenton , product manager at Future Facilities . Even so , he expects it to continue . “ The push towards higher computing services like AI is driving up rack and server densities in data centres . This is having the net effect of taking computing beyond the threshold of what is possible with air cooling alone . As such , we expect to see more and more liquid cooling in 2021 and beyond .”
ALTERNATIVE FUELS
Fredrik Forslunk , VP of enterprise and cloud erasure solutions at Blancco , a data erasure firm , thinks the problem is better tackled at the root : power generation . “ The energy targets currently set are achievable and we have seen strong development over the last few years . For example , hydropower is currently a leading source of energy for Nordic data centres . The output capacity of both solar and wind is already increasing too . Solar is likely the strongest candidate for supplying sustainable energy to data centres in
JANUARY 2021