News

Datacentre energy efficiency and green IT

• April 25, 2025 25 Apr'25

  How AI workloads are reshaping datacentre design

  At Gitex Asia 2025, industry leaders discuss how the computational demands of advanced AI models are forcing a rethink of datacentre power, cooling and networking infrastructure

• April 09, 2025 09 Apr'25

  EU sets out plans to ‘at least’ triple its AI datacentre capacity over the next seven years

  The European Union wants to reduce its dependence on non-EU datacentres in support of its plan to become an artificial intelligence superpower

• April 07, 2025 07 Apr'25

  UK government to address balancing energy sustainability with AI growth demands

  The government is to host its inaugural AI Energy Council meetup, as it seeks a route to ensuring its goal of making the UK an artificial intelligence superpower does not come at the expense of the nation’s energy security

• March 20, 2025 20 Mar'25

  The datacentre energy deficit: How worried should operators be about power outages?

  The UK government’s plans to lower the barriers to new datacentre developments has left industry watchers querying how all these server farms will be powered. But are they worrying about nothing?

• March 11, 2025 11 Mar'25

  Report hails benefits of ‘socially integrating’ datacentres into local communities

  Research report, featuring input from datacentre market stakeholders and sociological experts, makes case for socially integrating server farms into society

• March 07, 2025 07 Mar'25

  Latest Alibaba AI model demos AI improvements

  The latest model from Chinese public cloud provider Alibaba shows how reinforced learning is driving AI efficiency

• February 19, 2025 19 Feb'25

  ARM and Meta: Plotting a path to dilute GPU capacity

  Meta wants to make artificial intelligence available to everyone who uses its platforms, but scaling AI to over one billion people is not going to be cheap

• February 18, 2025 18 Feb'25

  EY: Industrial companies worldwide stunted in emerging technology use

  Businesses globally are spending more on emerging technologies year-on-year, but struggle to expand experimental use cases, finds EY’s sixth annual Reimagining Industry Futures study

• February 12, 2025 12 Feb'25

  Cisco: We will get better on AI power consumption

  At Cisco Live EMEA in Amsterdam, Cisco execs shared their thoughts on the developing issues around how artificial intelligence is affecting datacentre power consumption

• January 30, 2025 30 Jan'25

  First international AI safety report published

  A global cohort of nearly 100 artificial intelligence experts publish first international AI safety report ahead of the third AI summit, outlining an array of challenges posed by the technology that will be used to inform upcoming discussions

• January 28, 2025 28 Jan'25

  DeepSeek: Welcome to US artificial intelligence’s Sputnik moment

  In spite of the US’s financial might, Russia’s Sputnik was the first satellite. Is something similar about to happen thanks to a new Chinese LLM?

• January 20, 2025 20 Jan'25

  Power grid constraints threaten Dutch digital innovation ambitions

  The Netherlands risks falling behind in crucial digital innovations such as artificial intelligence as power grid congestion reaches critical levels across the country

• January 20, 2025 20 Jan'25

  Telehouse research highlights UK knowledge gap about what datacentres do

  Despite the government’s efforts to champion the datacentre sector as a critical component of the country’s future growth, research shows the general public is largely unaware of what server farms are and what they do

• January 17, 2025 17 Jan'25

  Enterprises need to make better choices to reduce GenAI emissions

  Capgemini says the high environmental costs of generative artificial intelligence systems mean organisations need to develop roadmaps to make their use more sustainable

• January 14, 2025 14 Jan'25

  Developing AI datacentres: Has the UK government got what it takes?

  The UK government has unveiled its 50-point AI action plan, which commits to building sovereign artificial intelligence capabilities and accelerating AI datacentre developments - but questions remain about the viability of the plans

• January 10, 2025 10 Jan'25

  GenAI causing hyperscale datacentres to swell in size, research shows

  Synergy Research Group data shows impact that generative AI demand will have on the number and size of hyperscale datacentres in operation around the world

• January 05, 2025 05 Jan'25

  Digital Edge secures $1.6bn to fuel regional expansion

  Singapore-based datacentre provider has raised over $1.6bn in equity and debt financing to meet growing demand for cloud and AI infrastructure across Asia

• December 20, 2024 20 Dec'24

  Government review of denied datacentre builds sees Iver project get green light

  The government has granted the developers of a proposed datacentre in Iver, Buckinghamshire, permission to press ahead with the project after the local council blocked the plans on Green Belt protection grounds

• December 17, 2024 17 Dec'24

  Top 10 datacentre stories of 2024

  Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 datacentre stories of 2024

• December 11, 2024 11 Dec'24

  Microsoft shares details of plans to reduce water usage of AI datacentres

  Microsoft has released details of the latest initiative to minimise the environmental footprint of its datacentres

• December 03, 2024 03 Dec'24

  VMware ‘shock’ spawned lock-in rebellion, says NetApp

  NetApp makes predictions for 2025 that include lower tolerance for lock-in due to VMware changes, a shift to DRaaS, AI disillusionment and big spending on energy infrastructure

• December 02, 2024 02 Dec'24

  AWS signs multi-year deal with GenAI platform provider to decarbonise its datacentres

  Amazon Web Services has signed a multi-year deal with Orbital Materials that will draw on GenAI skills to develop technologies that could decarbonise its datacentres

• November 27, 2024 27 Nov'24

  Dutch politicians raise concerns over Big Tech reliance

  Dutch political parties have warned about the Netherlands’ growing reliance on US tech giants

• November 20, 2024 20 Nov'24

  Digital Catapult hails shared infrastructure as route to decarbonisation for logistics sector

  Digital Catapult has opened up about the success it has seen with using shared digital infrastructure to help the transport-logistics sector work more collaboratively to cut carbon emissions

• November 15, 2024 15 Nov'24

  Microsoft UAE power deal at centre of US plan for AI supremacy

  Microsoft pens artificial intelligence energy deal with United Arab Emirates oil giant ADNOC

• November 12, 2024 12 Nov'24

  Gartner warns GenAI demand will lead to datacentre energy shortages

  IT market watcher Gartner is warning enterprises that the growing demand for generative AI workloads will have a knock-on impact on energy supply and pricing in future years

• November 11, 2024 11 Nov'24

  Hyperscalers’ net-zero plans hit roadblock

  Hyperscalers are looking at nuclear to power their energy-hungry datacentres and meet net-zero targets – but regulations may curb their plans

• November 04, 2024 04 Nov'24

  Microsoft trials building ‘wooden’ datacentres in pursuit of 2030 carbon-negative goal

  Microsoft has gone public with its plans to build two datacentres in Northern Virginia made partly from wood, in the interests of cutting the amount of carbon generated by its server farm builds

• October 29, 2024 29 Oct'24

  AI core to Nordic net-zero economy

  Artificial intelligence will be core to attempts by Nordic countries to become net-zero economies

• October 15, 2024 15 Oct'24

  Google prepares for nuclear to power AI datacentres

  As part of its drive towards sustainable energy and to meet ever-increasing power demands, Google is planning to use small nuclear reactors

• October 14, 2024 14 Oct'24

  AWS expands datacentre hardware recycling programme to Dublin

  The public cloud giant is expanding its reverse logistics programme to Ireland, as part of its ongoing net-zero push

• October 01, 2024 01 Oct'24

  Wellcome Sanger Institute revamps genome sequencing datacentre to cut energy usage

  The home to one of Europe’s largest genomic research datacentres claims to have cut the energy consumption of its server farm by a third by revamping its power setup

• August 27, 2024 27 Aug'24

  AI innovation key to UK business, but obstacles threaten progress

  AI is seen by IT leaders as essential, but it requires innovation, skills and infrastructure – all of which are under pressure from day-to-day firefighting, energy costs and cyber threats

• August 21, 2024 21 Aug'24

  QiStor flashes key-value storage software for hardware acceleration

  US-based startup will develop storage software allied with FPGA chips to allow data storage to bypass spinning disk era block addressing to speed performance and cut energy use

• August 01, 2024 01 Aug'24

  Natural History Museum partners with AWS to restore and protect urban nature

  The Natural History Museum said it expects to collect and analyse 20 terabytes of species data in year one with help from AWS

• July 31, 2024 31 Jul'24

  Norway’s datacentre builders focus on energy efficiency

  Datacentre developers in Norway are shifting their focus to energy efficiency, with expected increases in taxation for those who fall short

• July 30, 2024 30 Jul'24

  APAC organisations can cut carbon emissions with AWS

  Accenture study reveals that APAC organisations can significantly reduce their carbon footprint by migrating workloads from on-premise datacentres to AWS

• July 19, 2024 19 Jul'24

  Cloud sustainability: Amazon employees question firm’s renewable energy claims

  The contents of Amazon’s annual sustainability report has come in for criticism from both past and present employees of the company, as well as independent IT sustainability experts

• July 17, 2024 17 Jul'24

  AWS, Microsoft and Google urge datacentre kit suppliers to improve Scope 3 data collection

  AWS, Microsoft and Google put their names to an open letter, calling on third-party datacentre construction and equipment providers to do a better job with helping calculate Scope 3 emissions of cloud platforms

• July 10, 2024 10 Jul'24

  Datacentre market supports Labour government’s review of blocked server farm builds

  New government has wasted no time in lowering planning permission barriers to new datacentre builds, with its disclosure that two previously denied projects are being placed under review

• July 09, 2024 09 Jul'24

  Microsoft and Google’s GHG emissions gains call viability of net-zero targets into question

  Microsoft and Google cite expansion of their datacentres due to demand for AI services for their greenhouse gas emissions increasing. What does this mean for their 2030 carbon reduction commitments?

• July 03, 2024 03 Jul'24

  Tech leaders recognised for social, cultural and economic innovations

  TechUK President's Awards highlight the contribution of the IT community to improving society through digital innovation

• July 01, 2024 01 Jul'24

  Gartner flags missed opportunities for enterprises to make cost-effective green IT gains

  Market watcher Gartner claims most cost-effective sustainable IT initiatives are being underused by enterprises

• June 13, 2024 13 Jun'24

  AI’s environmental cost could outweigh sustainability benefits

  Artificial intelligence can help organisations manage and mitigate their environmental impacts in a number of ways, but the highly polluting nature of the technology could outweigh its other sustainability benefits if not dealt with

• May 14, 2024 14 May'24

  NetApp upgrades AFF all-flash as it targets AI storage

  New AFF arrays offer performance boost for artificial intelligence, while NetApp trumpets its advantages as a provider of sustainable and intelligent infrastructure for all kinds of workloads

• April 22, 2024 22 Apr'24

  Fujifilm plans to ‘make tape easy’ with Kangaroo SME appliance

  Fujifilm to add 100TB SME-focused Kangaroo tape infrastructure in a box to existing 1PB offer, as energy efficiency and security of tape make it alluring to customers

• April 22, 2024 22 Apr'24

  Digital Edge punching above its weight in Asia datacentre market

  Fast-growing datacentre provider Digital Edge is eyeing business from hyperscalers and counting on its strengths in datacentre operations and local partnerships to stand out from rivals

• April 17, 2024 17 Apr'24

  CIO interview: Making datacentres greener

  We speak to the CIO of Danfoss about how the company has used HPE GreenLake to improve energy efficiency

• April 16, 2024 16 Apr'24

  Leil wants to revive MAID as green storage tape substitute

  MAID sought to provide energy-efficient disk storage with quicker access times than tape. Estonian startup Leil wants to supplant tape with green storage spin-down SMR drives

• March 14, 2024 14 Mar'24

  French datacentre operator to prototype using site's waste heat to generate renewable energy

  Data4 is partnering with the University of Paris-Saclay to experiment with reusing waste datacentre heat to grow algae for use in green energy generation