Microsoft's New Zealand Data Centres to be Powered by Carbon-Zero Electricity
Microsoft's three new data centres in New Zealand will be powered by certified carbon-zero electricity as companies are committing to more green initiatives.
The data centres are powered by an agreement with Auckland-based Ecotricity. Several huge cloud data centres are being built in Auckland and the South Island.
Datagrid, an Auckland-based company, has marketed a data centre it is developing outside of Invercargill as "Australasia's first carbon-neutral hyperscale data centre."
Microsoft stated that its data centres would be cleaner because they would use air cooling rather than water cooling.
According to Microsoft, businesses that use "sustainable cloud" data centres instead of their own "less efficient" infrastructure would benefit the entire country.
The pandemic has raised the demand for data centres, but they consume a lot of power.
Singapore removed a three-year moratorium on data centre construction this year but has set rigorous new energy-use rules.
Data centres in Ireland now consume more power than all rural residences combined, complicating the country's efforts to tackle climate change.
According to a 2021 estimate, by 2030, they would account for 1.86 per cent of world electricity consumption, up from 1.15 per cent in 2016.
Data centres are becoming significantly more efficient, with research indicating that data storage has increased 25 times with only a threefold increase in energy consumption. Data centre computing has grown 6.5 times with only a 25% increase in power consumption. However, researchers believe that efficiency improvements may begin to slow.
Source: FBC News
