News

Datacentre energy efficiency and green IT

• December 31, 2021 31 Dec'21

  Top 10 Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcasts of 2021

  The Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast team began the year discussing the online fallout from the storming of the White House and finished it discussing IT and climate change, touching on bees and datacentres along the way

• December 20, 2021 20 Dec'21

  Top 10 datacentre stories of 2021

  Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 datacentre stories of 2021

• December 13, 2021 13 Dec'21

  Industry group aims to tackle energy-efficient software development

  How many processor cycles does an algorithm use? Can it use less and, if so, how will this reduce overall energy usage and greenhouse emissions?

• December 09, 2021 09 Dec'21

  NEXTDC opens edge datacentre on the Sunshine Coast

  NEXTDC’s SC1 facility is the first in a series of edge datacentre sites that will provide low-latency services to regional businesses and global linkages

• December 07, 2021 07 Dec'21

  Government makes £116m pledge to help UK's green-tech firms innovate to fight climate change

  The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has outlined its commitment to helping UK green-tech businesses bring to market innovations that could help fight climate change

• December 07, 2021 07 Dec'21

  Schneider Electric gifts the datacentre industry a five-part sustainability framework

  Datacentre power systems specialist has drawn up a framework that it hopes will help the industry standardise its reporting of sustainability metrics

• November 17, 2021 17 Nov'21

  Average size of hyperscale datacentres is on the rise

  Latest data from IT market watcher Synergy Research Group highlights how the number and size of hyperscale datacentres around the world is on the up

• November 17, 2021 17 Nov'21

  COP26: Lord Maude on using open source to help fight against climate change

  Public and private sector organisations need to pool their resources and collaborate to address the climate crisis by using open source technologies, urged Lord Maude during OpenUK’s COP26 event

• November 15, 2021 15 Nov'21

  UK’s first datacentre-focused University Technical College course makes its debut

  Some of the datacentre sector’s biggest players have pooled their resources to help launch the UK’s first industry-specific University Technical College course

• November 12, 2021 12 Nov'21

  OpenUK debuts carbon-negative datacentre blueprint at COP26

  Open source championing not-for-profit OpenUK puts forward plan to reduce the environmental impact of datacentres, with an emphasis on encouraging site and hardware reuse

• November 09, 2021 09 Nov'21

  Public cloud use linked to reduced carbon emissions and energy consumption, finds 451 Research

  IT analyst house 451 Research claims European enterprises could dramatically improve their sustainability credentials by shuttering their datacentres and moving their business applications to the public cloud

• November 08, 2021 08 Nov'21

  Irish government confirms datacentre strategy review in revised 2021 climate plan

  The Irish government is ramping up its commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but acknowledges hitting its revised up target will be a challenge given the country’s current datacentre growth rate

• November 07, 2021 07 Nov'21

  Businesses failing to cut carbon footprint of ‘power-hungry’ technology

  Tackling the power consumption of datacentres features low on the list of tech leaders’ priorities, but pressures to change are growing

• November 02, 2021 02 Nov'21

  Electronic waste excluded from COP26 agenda

  Data sanitation industry group calls on UK government to add electronic waste to the climate summit’s agenda

• October 28, 2021 28 Oct'21

  Benioffs and Salesforce put $300m into combating climate change on eve of COP26

  $200m committed to reforestation and restoration efforts, and $100m for non-profits over the next 10 years

• October 27, 2021 27 Oct'21

  Microsoft: Solving the climate crisis will require moon landing levels of tech innovation

  Microsoft’s chief environmental officer says it’s not too late to prevent a climate disaster, but doing so will require a group effort and levels of tech innovation on a par with those needed to put a man on the moon

• October 19, 2021 19 Oct'21

  Government flags opportunity for re-use of waste datacentre heat in net-zero strategy

  UK government's long-awaited net-zero strategy document makes the case for the creation of heat networks that could see waste heat from datacentres used to warm homes and businesses

• October 13, 2021 13 Oct'21

  Microsoft makes carbon emissions-tracking dashboard generally available to cloud users

  Microsoft has confirmed the general availability of a dashboard that will allow enterprises to track the greenhouse gas emissions generated by their cloud usage habits in latest sustainability push

• October 13, 2021 13 Oct'21

  Google Cloud renews commitment to helping enterprises decarbonise their IT infrastructure

  Public cloud giant is making a series of tools available to users of its off-premise platforms that are designed to help them decarbonise their IT setups

• October 11, 2021 11 Oct'21

  Oracle commits to growing global datacentre footprint by opening 14 new regions over coming year

  Database giant to build out its datacentre presence across the world on the back of growing demand for its cloud infrastructure services

• October 05, 2021 05 Oct'21

  Kao Data secures up to £130m in funding to finance colocation datacentre expansions

  Harlow-based colocation giant has secure further investment as its expansion plans gather pace

• September 27, 2021 27 Sep'21

  Private equity cash fuels Nordic datacentre growth

  Private equity companies are betting on the Nordic datacentre sector as demand for services in the region accelerates

• September 23, 2021 23 Sep'21

  European cloud providers are growing revenue but losing market share, Synergy data shows

  Latest data from Synergy Research Group highlights changing dynamics within the European cloud market, as the US giants continue to grow their share

• September 23, 2021 23 Sep'21

  SSE Renewables teams up with Microsoft for AI-led puffin conservation project on Isle of May

  Green energy provider talks up the potential for artificial intelligence technology to help speed up the time it takes to bring new supplies of renewable power onto the grid

• September 14, 2021 14 Sep'21

  TikTok’s take-off fuels hyperscale datacentre spend by parent company ByteDance

  Following its meteoric rise to social media prominence, TikTok’s parent company is confirmed as being the world’s seventh-biggest datacentre spender after just three years of expansion

• September 14, 2021 14 Sep'21

  Uptime Institute highlights patchy reporting of water use by datacentre operators

  With the water usage habits of datacentres coming under increased scrutiny, research from resiliency think tank Uptime Institute highlights shortcomings in the sector's reporting of how much water facilities use

• September 13, 2021 13 Sep'21

  Google joins Microsoft and Facebook by pledging to replenish more water than it consumes by 2030

  Google is the latest tech giant to go public with its commitment to becoming a water-positive entity

• September 06, 2021 06 Sep'21

  Verne Global acquired for £231m as Nordic datacentre investment trend gathers pace

  Icelandic colocation firm acquired by digital infrastructure investment fund as demand for datacentre capacity in the Nordics continues to grow

• August 20, 2021 20 Aug'21

  Facebook vows to replenish more water than it consumes across its global operations by 2030

  Social networking giant is following in Microsoft’s footprints by setting itself a goal of becoming a water-positive entity by 2030

• August 11, 2021 11 Aug'21

  Norway’s government steps up efforts to court overseas datacentre investors and developers

  The Norwegian government is making a concerted push to attract more foreign investment into its datacentre sector by talking up the country’s green credentials

• August 09, 2021 09 Aug'21

  Alliance formed to build modular power-hungry HPC datacentres in energy surplus regions

  Green datacentre company Cloud&Heat Technologies has formed an alliance with Earth Wind & Power that will see the pair seek to build scalable, modular datacentres in areas where utility firms are producing surplus energy

• August 04, 2021 04 Aug'21

  Research points to growing importance of secondary datacentre hubs across Europe in years to come

  Datacentrepricing’s half-year look at the growth of the European datacentre market reinforces the rising importance of secondary datacentre hubs across the continent

• August 04, 2021 04 Aug'21

  Dropbox shares datacentre sustainability strategy as it plots to be 100% renewably powered by 2030

  Cloud-based file sync and share giant goes public with plans to run all its datacentres on renewable power by 2030

• July 30, 2021 30 Jul'21

  Covid-19: TechUK urges government to tweak self-isolation policy for critical datacentre workers

  TechUK wants datacentre operators to be allowed to run their own "test and release" protocols for Covid-negative workers that have been told to self-isolate by NHS Track and Trace

• July 28, 2021 28 Jul'21

  APAC organisations can reduce carbon footprint with cloud

  Energy savings of nearly 80% can be achieved by running business applications in the cloud rather than on-premise infrastructure, study finds

• July 22, 2021 22 Jul'21

  Beeinfotech PH opens telco-neutral datacentre in the Philippines

  Datacentre startup is touting carrier neutrality, bespoke services and cyber security capabilities to meet the growing demand for co-location services in the Philippines

• July 20, 2021 20 Jul'21

  Government shares vision for digitised energy system as it pursues net-zero emissions target

  Strategy is geared towards readying the UK energy system for the transition from fossil fuels to renewable power through digital transformation

• July 19, 2021 19 Jul'21

  Kao Data claims UK first with push to ditch diesel for biofuel in datacentre backup generators

  Harlow-based colocation player claims its on course to become the first datacentre operator in the UK to ditch diesel in favour of biofuel in its backup power generators

• July 15, 2021 15 Jul'21

  Virgin Media outage: Electrical explosion takes down network in south-east London

  Underground electrical network explosion causes ‘significant collateral damage’ to cabling infrastructure, with users in south-east London told to brace themselves for ‘at least’ 24 hours of disruption

• July 13, 2021 13 Jul'21

  Digital Realty retains EMEA colocation market leader status in H1 2021

  Half-yearly datacentre market tracker data from Cloudscene confirms Digital Realty remains the operator to beat in EMEA, but its nearest rival, Equinix, leads the market in several other regions

• July 05, 2021 05 Jul'21

  Ascendas India Trust to build datacentre near Mumbai

  New datacentre campus near Mumbai will deliver 90MW of power to host technology and cloud suppliers as well as large Indian companies in a fast-growing market

• June 30, 2021 30 Jun'21

  Interxion creates London-wide colocation datacentre hub through £1.1m fibre cable roll-out

  Colocation giant Interxion has invested £1.1m in a network roll-out that will connect up eight of its London-based datacentres

• June 28, 2021 28 Jun'21

  Green Mountain agrees to let land-based trout farm make use of its datacentre's waste heated water

  Green Mountain has gone public with details of a second heat reuse agreement it has signed that will see its waste datacentre water used to warm a nearby land-based trout farm

• June 25, 2021 25 Jun'21

  Apple seeks five-year extension to planning permission deadline for Irish datacentre site

  Tech giant Apple has requested a five-year extension to the planning permission deadline for its abandoned datacentre in Ireland, as politicians call for the mothballed site to be put to use

• June 24, 2021 24 Jun'21

  Vodafone confirms European datacentres will be powered by 100% green energy by July 2021

  Telco giant claims it is on course to hit an important milestone in its latest sustainability push, with its entire European operations set to be 100% renewably powered by 1 July

• June 22, 2021 22 Jun'21

  Green Mountain signs datacentre waste heat reuse agreement with Norwegian lobster farm

  Norway-based datacentre operator signs a waste heat reuse agreement with the world’s first land-based lobster farm

• June 21, 2021 21 Jun'21

  Philanthropists join forces to create $1bn distributed green energy platform to fight climate change

  IKEA Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation to help make renewable energy more accessible as part of a global push to fight climate change and curb greenhouse gas emissions

• June 17, 2021 17 Jun'21

  Lenovo and Intel unveil second phase of Leibniz Supercomputing Centre’s HPC buildout

  Currently ranked as the 15th most powerful supercomputer in the world, Lenovo and Intel’s tech will be used to up the performance and compute capabilities of the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre’s HPC environment

• June 17, 2021 17 Jun'21

  Ireland’s datacentre industry to plant 1,000 orchards by 2022 as pro-pollinator plan gathers pace

  The Host in Ireland-backed effort to get the Irish datacentre community to throw its weight behind growing the country’s population of bees and other pollinators has entered a new phase

• June 17, 2021 17 Jun'21

  Equinix vows to curb greenhouse gas emissions of its global operations

  Colocation giant Equinix is setting science-based targets to help guide its efforts to curb the amount of greenhouse gases generated by its global operations and supply chain partners