Data Centre Emissions
The greenhouse gas emissions from data centre operations, including electricity for servers and cooling, embodied carbon of IT equipment, and associated water consumption — a growing focus area as digital infrastructure expands.
What is Data Centre Emissions?
Data centres are significant and growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The International Energy Agency estimates that data centres consumed around 1-1.3% of global electricity demand in 2023, with rapid growth driven by AI, cloud computing, and digitisation.
Data centre emissions span multiple scopes: Scope 1 (backup diesel generators, refrigerant leaks), Scope 2 (electricity for IT load, cooling, and supporting infrastructure), and Scope 3 (embodied carbon of servers and networking equipment, employee commuting, and waste disposal of end-of-life equipment).
Key efficiency metrics include Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) — the ratio of total facility energy to IT equipment energy, with best-in-class facilities achieving PUE of 1.1-1.2 compared to an industry average of around 1.6. Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) measures the litres of water consumed per kWh of IT energy.
For organisations that don't operate their own data centres, cloud computing and colocation emissions typically fall under Scope 3. The GHG Protocol ICT Sector Guidance provides methodologies for calculating and allocating these emissions. Cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud now publish carbon footprint tools that estimate customer-attributed emissions.
Practical Examples
A cloud-hosting company tracks its PUE across 12 facilities, achieving an average of 1.15 through free-air cooling, hot/cold aisle containment, and optimised server loads.
A financial services firm calculates its Scope 3 emissions from cloud computing by using its cloud provider's carbon footprint dashboard and attributing emissions based on resource consumption.
A colocation provider publishes an annual sustainability report showing its path to 100% renewable energy, including PPA procurement and REGO matching for all electricity consumption.
How Climatise Helps
Climatise tracks data centre emissions across all scopes, including Scope 2 electricity consumption, Scope 1 from backup generators and refrigerants, and Scope 3 from IT equipment and cloud services. The platform integrates with cloud provider carbon APIs to give you a complete picture of your digital infrastructure emissions.
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