energy use

More efficient cooling for data centers

July 22, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Increasing reliance on digital technologies in general and artificial intelligence in particular are dramatically increasing the energy consumption of data centers. Data centers consume far more energy per square foot than other commercial buildings. By the year 2030, data center energy consumption in the US is projected to reach 9% of the country’s electricity generation.

Computing hardware consumes large amounts of energy and generates large amounts of heat in the process. Currently, cooling the equipment so it doesn’t burn out accounts for as much as 40% of a data center’s total energy use.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new cooling technology that could significantly improve the energy efficiency of data centers. The technology makes use of a specially engineered fiber membrane that passively removes heat through evaporation.

The membrane has a network of tiny, interconnected pores that draw cooling liquid across the membrane surface using capillary action. As the liquid evaporates, it removes heat from the electronics underneath. No extra energy is required.

Tests of the membrane demonstrated record-breaking performance in removing heat from electronics and being able to withstand very high levels of heat flux.

The researchers say that the technology is still operating well below its theoretical limit, and with additional work, can lead to optimized performance. The membranes will be integrated into cold plates, which are components that attach to power-hungry computing components to dissipate heat. The team is also launching a startup company to commercialize the new cooling technology.

**********

Web Links

New Cooling Tech Could Curb Data Centers’ Rising Energy Demands

Photo, posted January 23, 2023, courtesy of Jefferson Lab via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Electricity demand from data centers

February 17, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Data centers are dedicated facilities containing computers and their related hardware equipment such as servers, data storage drives, and network equipment; they are the physical facilities that store digital data. Data centers are one of the most energy-intensive building types, consuming 10 to 50 times more energy per floor space than a typical commercial office building. With the explosive growth of artificial intelligence technology, data center energy use is expanding rapidly.

A new report by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory outlines the energy use of data centers from 2014 to 2028. The report estimates that data center load growth has tripled over the past decade and is likely to double or triple again by 2028.

Data centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and are projected to consume between 6.7% and 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028. Most of the increased power demand of data centers is due to the growth in AI servers. Artificial intelligence requires increasingly powerful chips and intense, power-hungry cooling systems.

There have been revolutionary changes in artificial intelligence technology in just the past couple of years and its role in society has dramatically expanded. With that expansion has come a dramatic change in the energy usage by the data industry and innovative solutions are needed to allow data centers to meet their growing demand for energy.

**********

Web Links

Berkeley Lab Report Evaluates Increase in Electricity Demand from Data Centers

Photo, posted August 31, 2024, courtesy of Aileen Devlin / Jefferson Lab via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Big Food and greenhouse gas emissions

October 29, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The global food system is responsible for as much as 40% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. The investor advocacy group Ceres has tracked whether the 50 largest North American food and agriculture companies have set targets to lower their emissions and whether doing so has actually resulted in lower emissions.

The emissions from food and agriculture companies are grouped into three so-called scopes. Scope 1 are emissions from a company’s direct operations. Scope 2 are emissions from its energy use. Scope 3 are emissions from a company’s supply chain: from the farmers who grow crops, raise cattle, and otherwise provide necessary items for a company’s final products. In the food industry, the scope 3 category is responsible for about 90% of overall emissions.

Of the 50 food companies studied, 23 reduced their scope 1 and scope 2 emissions over the past 2 years, but only 12 reduced their scope 3 emissions. Companies have more control over their scope 1 and scope 2 emissions.

Reducing scope 3 emissions is more difficult. And most companies haven’t set scope 3 reduction targets.

The findings of the study suggest that reducing scope 3 emissions is especially difficult for companies whose supply chains are linked to carbon-intensive commodities, like meat, or crops linked to deforestation or land-use change, both of which result in increased emissions.

In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission finalized rules requiring companies to disclose their climate risk to regulators, increasing the visibility of the food industry emissions issue.

**********

Web Links

North America’s Biggest Food Companies Are Struggling to Lower Their Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Photo, posted October 13, 2011, courtesy of the United Soybean Board via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

AI’s Environmental Footprint

March 13, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Artificial intelligence is everywhere these days. Some say it is the biggest development since the discovery of fire. There is a lot of hype regarding AI, and it will be a while before the hype is sorted out from the reality. But one thing that is certain is that AI is resource-intensive and has a large environmental footprint.

AI use directly produces carbon emissions from its consumption of non-renewable electricity and is also responsible for the consumption of billions of gallons of fresh water.

Various forms of AI run on many types of devices, but the kind of AI we hear about the most – such as ChatGPT – requires specialized computer equipment that runs in large cloud data centers. There are roughly 10,000 such centers worldwide and more are under construction. Estimates are that electricity consumption from data centers will double between 2022 and 2026 to a total of 1,000 terawatts, roughly as much electricity as all of Japan uses.

These estimates include all data center activities, not just AI. Most operators of data centers don’t reveal what percentage of their energy use comes from AI. One exception is Google, which says machine learning accounts for about 15% of its data center energy use.

Data centers also consume a great deal of water to cool delicate electronics. In 2022, Google’s data centers consumed about 5 billion gallons of fresh water.

AI has the potential to improve the efficiency of systems, improve climate models, and perhaps help develop new ways to help reduce humanity’s environmental footprint. But at the moment, it represents an increasing burden on the environment that cannot just be ignored.

**********

Web Links

As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires

Photo, posted January 23, 2023, courtesy of Aileen Devlin / Jefferson Lab via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Living Walls | Earth Wise

December 28, 2021 By EarthWise 1 Comment

Green roofs are popular in many European countries. A green roof is a layer of vegetation planted over a waterproofing system installed on a flat or slightly sloped roof. Such roofs provide shade, remove heat from the air, and reduce temperatures of the roof surface, reducing energy use in the building and diminishing the urban heat-island effect.

A recent study by the University of Plymouth in the UK looked at the effectiveness of living walls – essentially the equivalent of a green roof located on the wall of a building.

The study looked at the effect of retrofitting an existing masonry wall with an exterior living wall façade consisting of a flexible felt fabric sheet system with pockets holding soil in which plants could grow.

Five weeks of measurements demonstrated that the amount of heat lost through the retrofitted wall was 31.4% lower than that of the original structure. They also found that daytime temperatures within the newly covered section remained more stable than the area with exposed masonry, so that less energy was required to heat that area.

The concept of living walls is fairly new but could be valuable in temperate climates such as Great Britain. Buildings in the UK account for 17% of greenhouse gas emissions and space heating accounts for 60% of all the energy used in buildings. So, improving the thermal performance of buildings would have a significant effect on reducing energy use and therefore emissions.

So-called green infrastructure, including green roofs and living walls, provides a nature-based solution that can help tackle climate change, air pollution, and other modern urban problems.

**********

Web Links

Living walls can reduce heat lost from buildings by over 30%, study shows

Photo, posted June 19, 2011, courtesy of Linda Hartley via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Saving Energy At Data Centers | Earth Wise

February 17, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A data center is a building, dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and data storage systems. Data centers are the backbone of internet services and cloud computing, which together are increasingly dominant elements of modern life.

Energy use is a central issue for data centers. Power used by them ranges from a few kilowatts for a rack of servers in a closet at a local business to several tens of megawatts for large facilities. Some data centers have power densities more than 100 times that of a typical office building and use as much electricity as several thousand homes. For such facilities, electricity costs are a dominant operating expense and account for over 10% of the total cost of ownership of a data center.These centers, with their numerous racks of computer servers, consume 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year in the United States, as much as all of our residences use for lighting.

A research group at Princeton University is developing a family of devices that can dramatically reduce power consumption at data centers. The team’s technology focuses on the process by which the AC power from the grid is converted to the low-voltage direct current used by computer equipment. With existing technology, this power conversion takes place in each individual computer, which ends up wasting about 40% of the original energy. The new device aggregates power conversion into a single unit, which then distributes the power to the individual computers and storage units.

As data centers get bigger and more numerous, the opportunity to save a lot of energy becomes increasingly important.

**********

Web Links

New technology boosts energy eﬃciency in data centers

Photo, posted June 8, 2007, courtesy of Sean Ellis via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Urban Agriculture And Sustainability Goals

November 12, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In 2016, the City Council of Phoenix, Arizona adopted eight Environmental Sustainability goals for 2050 that lay out the desired long term requirements in order to become a Sustainable Desert City. Recently, a group of researchers from Arizona State University assessed how urban agriculture can help Phoenix, a desert city of 1.6 million people, meet those sustainability goals.

Using public records and high-resolution satellite imagery, researchers analyzed the potential benefits of growing crops in three types of urban areas in Phoenix: vacant lots, rooftops, and building facades. The study, which was supported by the National Science Foundation and the USDA, estimated that there are 28 square miles (or 5.4% of city space) available for urban agriculture. The data-driven analysis found that 71% of the available areas for urban agriculture would come from existing buildings as opposed to vacant lots.

All this available space for urban agriculture in Phoenix could supply the city with nearly 183,000 tons of fresh produce annually, which would allow for the delivery of fresh fruits and vegetables to all of the city’s existing food deserts. In fact, the city’s own urban-agriculture output could meet 90% of the fresh produce demand that currently exists in Phoenix.

In addition to producing food, rooftop agriculture could also reduce the energy use in buildings by 3% per building per year, and displace more than 55,000 tons of CO2 annually. The use of vacant lots could increase the total Phoenix green space by 17%, and reduce the number of areas lacking green space by 60%.

This study demonstrates the many different ways that urban agriculture can benefit a city.

**********

Web Links

Urban agriculture can push the sustainability

Photo, posted May 10, 2011, courtesy of Stephen Zank via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Indoor Pollution

July 26, 2019 By EarthWise 1 Comment

We mostly think of air pollution as an outdoor problem. The primary culprits are vehicle and factory exhaust as well as occasional wildfire smoke. What we don’t think about is the air quality inside our own homes.

Researchers at Washington State University have found that indoor pollution levels can be surprisingly high and that they vary throughout the day and increase as temperatures rise.

Indoor air pollution comes from a variety of sources, including building materials, furniture, household chemical products, and from activities like cooking. One of the most serious pollutants is formaldehyde, which often is emitted from gypsum wallboard. About half of the gypsum used in homes as drywall is made from waste products from the coal industry. When the material is heated, formaldehyde and possibly even mercury can be emitted.

Pollutant levels rise in homes as temperatures increase. Thus, the highest levels of pollution occur in the afternoon and the lowest are in the early morning. Before this research, manufacturers and builders assumed that pollution levels were pretty much constant over time.

Building laws require that homes are structurally sound, and that people are comfortable, but there is little regulation of air quality in people’s homes. One of the best ways to clear out harmful chemicals is with ventilation to the outdoors. But with increased concern about reducing energy use, builders are making homes more airtight, which may inadvertently be worsening the problem.

We need to balance making more energy efficient homes with protecting our health by being aware of the dangers that lurk in the air in our homes. Running the air conditioning or opening windows are good things to do.

**********

Web Links

Researchers uncover indoor pollution hazards

Photo, posted October 14, 2010, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Our Growing Appetite For Energy

June 13, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Energy consumption in the United States set a record high in 2018. Overall, energy consumption reached 101.2 quadrillion BTUs or quads last year, breaking the previous record of 101.0 set in 2007. Most of us are not too familiar with quadrillions of anything, nor with BTUs for that matter. If it is any more illuminating, 101 quads are the equivalent of about 300 billion kilowatt hours. Our energy use increased by 3.6% from 2017, which was the largest annual increase since 2010.

Wind, solar, and natural gas provided the largest increases in energy supply. In 2018, solar and wind energy were both up by 0.18 quads, representing a 22% gain for solar and a 7.5% increase for wind. Over the past ten years, overall renewable energy has doubled in the U.S., with wind increasing by a factor of 5 since 2008 and solar by an amazing factor of 48.

Natural gas generation increased by 10.7%, or a total of 3 quads over the previous year. The growth in natural gas use isn’t good news, but since much of it represents replacing coal, it at least corresponds to reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

The unfortunate part of our energy consumption is that the majority of it is still in the form of “rejected energy”. It most often takes the form of waste heat, such as the warm exhaust from automobiles and furnaces. The efficiency of our cars, lightbulbs and factories determines how much waste heat is produced and in turn how much fuel and electricity can be put to productive use.

**********