Three decades ago the South Yorkshire landscape was still dominated by coal mines and steel works – some still operational, many not – but the face of the region was about to change.
Regeneration and environmental restoration would take time as collieries closed but left behind huge swathes of land contaminated by hydrocarbons, oils, metals and waste materials, which needed to be cleared and treated.
Eventually much of the land was repurposed as nature reserves, residential developments and business parks.
New environmental challenges were to emerge with the growth of huge call centres, which store, process and distribute vast amounts of digital data and information to support modern business.
Emissions now came from electricity consumption for power and cooling, embodied carbon from manufacturing IT equipment, and water usage for cooling systems.
Now, increasing demand for digital services such as AI is expected to significantly raise these greenhouse gas emissions with electricity consumption in some data centres potentially quadrupling by 2030.
The manufacturing, transportation, and disposal of IT equipment and infrastructure for data centres create embodied emissions.
Cooling systems consume large volumes of water, and the treatment and transportation of this water also generate emissions, while servers create heat.
The rapid turnover of equipment also leads to a growing problem of electronic waste, which has its own environmental footprint.
As energy demands for these data centres grow, many are worried that carbon emissions will, too.
The University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy suggests that big tech’s energy needs will see at least a five-fold increase over the next 15 years.
Currently, data centres account for nearly 1.5% of global emissions. This figure is expected to grow to eight per cent of total global greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, far exceeding current emissions from air travel, says the report.
Its lead author Bhargav Srinivasa Desikan says: “We know the environmental impact of AI will be formidable, but tech giants are deliberately vague about the energy requirements implicit in their aims,
"The lack of hard data on electricity and water consumption as well as associated carbon emissions of digital technology leaves policymakers and researchers in the dark about the climate harms AI might cause. We need to see urgent action from governments to prevent AI from derailing climate goals, not just deferring to tech companies on the promise of economic growth.”
Meanwhile, all five big tech companies (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple) have claimed carbon neutrality, though Google dropped the label last year as it stepped up its carbon accounting standards. Amazon is the most recent company to do so, claiming in July that it met its goal seven years early and that it had implemented a gross emissions cut of three per cent.
On the plus side, energy efficiency measures have helped to slow the growth of data centre energy use, despite a large increase in demand.
Companies are investing more in renewable energy sources to power data centres, which directly reduces their carbon footprint. Some firms are also implementing responsible water use practices to reduce their consumption.
However, almost two-thirds of organisations globally plan to invest significantly in GenAI in the next two years, and more than 90% are assessing enterprise-wide opportunities to use GenAI.
IT service providers therefore have a dual responsibility: addressing the existing sustainability challenges of their industry while keeping emerging technologies from worsening the climate crisis.
An issue that, as our reliance on advanced technology grows, will only become bigger.
