South Africa needs energy-efficient data centres to pull inefficient business computing out of local offices and homes and funnel it towards better-optimised environments.
That’s according to Adriaan Venter, CEO of Cube ICT Solutions, ahead of tomorrow’s International Day of Climate Action.
This important day, held annually on 24 October, helps raise global awareness about climate change while encouraging sustainable practices. These include replacing inefficient, energy-intensive and dispersed legacy IT infrastructure.
South African organisations can signal their support for the upcoming International Day of Climate Action by committing to assessing the energy savings available from moving in-house server racks to energy-efficient local data centres.
“Each step up on the technological ladder can move us closer to a cleaner world when we put energy efficiency first,” says Venter.
Demanding fewer, not more, data centres is as nonsensical as a 19th century naturalist speaking out against the construction of electrical infrastructure in favour of society remaining on candles and wood.
By migrating to modern colocation data centres employing advanced cooling technologies and optimised power distribution, for example, local firms can reduce cooling and power overheads compared with less efficient in-house facilities. This can also reduce their carbon footprint, depending on the electricity sources and total energy used.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) refers to data centres operating at a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of around 1.1, meaning that cooling and other facility overheads use only around 0.1 units of energy for every unit consumed by IT equipment.
In contrast, a facility with a PUE of 2.0 uses an additional unit of energy for cooling and other overheads for every unit consumed by IT equipment. That is a substantial overhead businesses should examine when comparing their server rooms with a prospective data centre.
It is also important to note that data centres can help avoid emissions. The Cloud computing and AI tasks that data centres enable facilitate remote work, virtual conferences, and more. Replacing a business trip with a virtual meeting can cut fuel use and travel emissions, although the digital services themselves also consume energy.
Furthermore, some data centre operators are helping to fund new renewable energy generation in South Africa. Teraco, for example, announced in November 2024 that construction has begun on a 120 MW solar plant in the Free State to supply its data centres through the electricity grid.
“The picture is clear: well-run, energy-efficient data centres can consolidate and replace inefficient, carbon-heavy energy-intensive legacy IT infrastructure, and are a smart step towards more sustainable computing. The key is choosing facilities that can demonstrate savings,” concludes Venter.