The green data centre market is set to grow at a CAGR of 7.5 per cent from 2021 through to 2027, according to the latest research report from Arizton Advisory and Intelligence.
The use of eco diesel generators, natural gas generators, fuel cells, and hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) is pushing towards sustainability in the data centre market. Sustainability has become a primary consideration for data centre development, with initiatives such as The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact, The Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) Council, and the RE100 are spearheading this shift. Governments are also pushing towards sustainable data centre development, increasing adoption of renewable energy by operators, and sustainable construction.
An increase in demand for renewable energy has also created significant revenue opportunities for energy suppliers. For instance, Dominion Energy is supplying renewable energy to Facebook (Meta) and STACK Infrastructure for their data centres. Many diesel generators are also installed in new data centres. Microsoft has been working towards the development of effective alternatives to diesel generator utilisation, keeping in mind the need to make its data centres more sustainable and less dependent on the utility grid.
The US is expected to dominate the market in North America followed by Canada with high investments by colocation providers and hyperscale data centre operators. The demand for cost-effective and efficient power solutions has increased, with a higher number of facilities being developed as green data centres in North America.
The procurement of renewable energy among data centre operators in the US is high. The US is home to major hyperscale data centers that are operated by Apple, Facebook (Meta), Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft, who are continuously investing in renewable energy to power their facilities and become carbon neutral.
Meanwhile, Canada is an upcoming market owing to the accessibility to renewable energy sources and low power costs of around $0.05 per kWh. Ontario is a data centre hub, followed by Quebec, which has abundant availability of renewable energy.
The report also concludes that the data centre market is witnessing substantial growth in terms of advanced technology adoption such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Countries across the globe have substantially started adopting AI for several operations. The most popular cooling technology used in High-Performance Computing (HPC) in data centres to support AI and ML workloads is liquid cooling. These technologies require powerful computing capabilities for TPU, where the heat generated exceeds the cooling limit and thus demands superior efficiency to keep the chips working at the optimal level.
