The technology giant They are rushing to avoid the carbon dioxide time bomb caused by the massive data centers they are building around the world.
The technology developed by Google is becoming more popular as power-hungry artificial intelligence comes online. Use the software to find clean power in regions of the world with excess solar and wind power on the grid and enhance data center operations there. Doing so has the potential to reduce carbon and costs.
Chris Noble, co-founder and CEO of Cirrus Nexus, a cloud computing manager that utilizes data centers owned by Google, Microsoft and Amazon, says it will maximize the use of renewable energy. He said there is an urgent need to find a way to run data centers in a manner similar to the above.
The climate risks posed by AI-driven computing are widespread and will worsen without a significant transition from fossil fuel-based electricity to clean electricity. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said AI has reached a “tipping point.” He also said that data center costs will double within five years due to the rise of new software.
According to the International Energy Agency, data centers and transmission networks already account for up to 1.5% of global consumption each. Together, they emit about the same amount of carbon dioxide as Brazil each year.
Hyperscalers known as the largest data center owners, such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, have all set climate change goals and are facing internal and external pressure to meet them. These lofty goals include decarbonizing our operations.
cause havoc
But the rise of AI is already taking a toll on these goals. Graphics processing units have been key to the rise of large language models and consume more power than CPUs used in other forms of computing. The IEA estimates that training AI models uses the electricity of more than 100 homes annually.
“The growth of AI is far outstripping the ability of AI to generate clean electricity,” he says.
Additionally, AI energy consumption is highly variable, resembling a sawtooth graph rather than the smooth line that most data center operators are accustomed to. Therefore, decarbonization has become an issue, not to mention ensuring the stability of the power grid.
Read: Data centers are straining power grids around the world
Dave Starlace, account director for global data centers at Hitachi Energy, said AI growth is being driven by North American companies, with computing power and energy usage concentrated in North America. It's a trend he didn't expect two years ago.
To reduce data center carbon emissions, hyperscalers and other data center providers have heavily financed solar and wind farms and used credits to offset emissions. . (In the case of credits, some have no significant impact on emissions.)
But that alone is not enough, especially with the increasing use of AI. That's why carriers are turning to a strategy Google employs called load shifting. The idea is to reduce emissions by transforming the way data centers function.
Most data centers today aim to operate in a “steady state” state, where energy consumption is fairly stable. Therefore, given the lack of inter-regional transmission lines, we are at the mercy of the connected power grid, and no matter what mix of natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable generation we have. However, they will be at their mercy. Tech giants are exploring opportunities to change the daily or hourly operations of their data centers around the world to absorb surplus renewable energy production to break their dependence on dirty power grids. .
Google is launching the first initiative to match electricity usage in certain data centers with zero-carbon electricity on an hourly basis to keep machines running on clean energy 24/7. No one has yet fully achieved that goal. And to be sure, strategies for distributing loads around the world can be complicated by countries pursuing data sovereignty policies that seek to restrict and protect cross-border data flows. But what Cirrus Nexus and Google are testing could still be an important piece of the puzzle for reducing emissions.
Manhattan-based Cirrus Nexus studies power grids around the world and measures emissions every five minutes to create the least polluting computing for itself and its customers in industries ranging from pharmaceuticals to accounting. Finding resources. Last year, the company had the opportunity to put that exploration into practice.
The Netherlands is in the midst of its sunniest June on record, lowering the cost of solar power for the grid. This has resulted in lower server operating costs and a lower carbon footprint. Cirrus Nexus then moved its computing load to California when the sun went down in the Netherlands, allowing the Golden State to take advantage of solar power that had just come online that day.
According to the company's data, by following the sun from Europe to the U.S. West Coast and back again, the company and its clients can reduce the compute footprint of their specific workloads by relying on only one location or the other. Instead, we were able to reduce it by 34%. Flexing your operations for this purpose has both benefits and risks.
terrifying goal
The ability to pursue spare zero-carbon megawatts helps reduce stress on the power grid during events such as heat waves and frigid winter storms. But data centers need to work with power companies and grid operators because large fluctuations in demand can disrupt power systems and increase the probability of power outages. Dominion Energy, a Virginia power company experiencing a surge in data center demand, is working on a program to use data center load shifting to reduce stress on the power grid during extreme weather events.
In recent years, Google and Amazon have been testing migrating the use of data centers for their own operations and clients using cloud services. (Cirrus Nexus, for example, uses cloud services provided by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.) In Virginia, Microsoft has an agreement with Constellation Energy to provide zero-zero power for more than 90% of data centers in its area. Guaranteed to be carbon energy. But reaching 100% remains a difficult goal for the company and other hyperscalers.
Read: How data centers are fighting South Africa's energy crisis
Michael Terrell, who leads Google's 24/7 carbon-free energy strategy, said Google's data centers run on carbon-free energy about 64% of the time, with 13 of its regional sites reaching 85%. , and 7 sites worldwide have reached over 90%.
“But if we're not moving fossil assets, we're not fully meeting our climate goals,” Terrell said. — Noreen S. Malik, (c) 2024 Bloomberg LP
