The environmental footprint of data centers in the United States

Much of the world’s data are stored, managed, and distributed by data centers. Data centers re-quire a tremendous amount of energy to operate, accounting for around 1.8% of electricity use in the United States. Large amounts of water are also required to operate data centers, both directly for liquid cooling and indirectly to produce electricity. For the first time, we calculate spatially-detailed carbon and water footprints of data centers operating within the United States, which is home to around one-quarter of all data center servers globally. Our bottom-up approach reveals one-fifth of data center servers direct water footprint comes from moderately to highly water stressed watersheds, while nearly half of servers are fully or partially powered by power plants located within water stressed regions. Approximately 0.5% of total US greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to data centers. We investigate tradeoffs and synergies between data center’s water and energy utilization by strategically locating data centers in areas of the country that will minimize one or more environmental footprints. Our study quantifies the environmental implications behind our data creation and storage and shows a path to decrease the environmental footprint of our increasing digital footprint..

全球大量数据存储、管理和分发均依赖于数据中心。数据中心在运营过程中需消耗巨额能源，约占美国电力消耗的1.8%。此外，数据中心的运营还大量消耗水资源，这不仅包括直接用于液体冷却的部分，也包括间接用于发电的部分。本研究首次对美国境内数据中心的空间详细碳足迹和水足迹进行了计算，美国拥有全球数据中心服务器的约四分之一。我们的自下而上的研究方法揭示，数据中心服务器直接水足迹的五分之一源自中度至高度缺水的水系，而近半数服务器完全或部分由位于缺水区域内的发电厂供电。美国总温室气体排放量的约0.5%可归因于数据中心。我们通过策略性地将数据中心定位在能够最小化一个或多个环境足迹的地区，研究了数据中心水能利用之间的权衡与协同效应。我们的研究量化了数据创建和存储背后的环境影响，并指出了减少日益增长的数字足迹环境足迹的路径。