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..

全球绝大多数数据均由数据中心进行存储、管理与分发。数据中心运行需要消耗巨量能源，其用电量约占美国总用电量的1.8%。同时，数据中心运行还需大量水资源，既直接用于液冷系统，也间接用于电力生产环节。美国作为全球约四分之一数据中心服务器的承载地，本研究首次针对境内运营的数据中心，测算其空间精细化的碳足迹（carbon footprint）与水足迹（water footprint）。本研究采用自下而上分析法（bottom-up approach），结果显示五分之一的数据中心服务器的直接水足迹来自水资源压力中等至严重的流域，而近半数服务器的电力全部或部分来自水资源压力区域内的发电厂。美国总温室气体排放量中约有0.5%来自数据中心。我们通过将数据中心战略性布局在美国境内可最小化一项或多项环境足迹的区域，探究了数据中心水与能源利用之间的权衡关系与协同效应。本研究量化了数据生成与存储背后的环境影响，并为降低日益增长的数字足迹带来的环境影响提供了可行路径。