‘Don’t sugarcoat data centre environmental impacts’
Data centres should be more transparent about the impact they have on the environment, a sustainability expert has said.
Helen Munro, head of environment & sustainability at Pulsant, which has just invested £10 million in a data centre at Milton Keynes, said that while many data centre developers were involved in environmental initiatives, it was important they didn’t sugarcoat that digital infrastructure uses precious energy and materials.
“I think a lot of data centre operators are doing good work and trying to be as efficient as possible, while delivering the services that underpin how we live. But there is going to be an impact when building and operating data centres.
“The industry shouldn’t be creating the impression that digital services come without environmental cost.”
There was also a need to account for the wider digital supply chain when assessing environmental performance, Munro said. “We need broader collaboration to achieve efficiency, involving all stakeholders in the supply chain, including the manufacturer of the hardware, the energy infrastructure and value chain, and the platform using the centre.
“For a given task, we need to ask, ‘what is the most resource-effective outcome’?”
Pulsant continues to improve the efficiency of its operations, upgrading infrastructure for the lowest possible energy usage. “We buy renewable energy, but we use a location-based approach to carbon reporting in our key metrics. Users can see the broader impact of their data centre use.
“We’ve been expressing our carbon intensity in relation to co-location services, breaking it down for clients in a way you don’t always see other operators do.”
Pressure from data centres on resources in a particular area could be overcome by splitting up workloads among a series of smaller installations, she explained. “For AI workloads, very large data centres magnify the concentration of pressure on the energy network. There is also a resiliency risk in having a lot of processing operations associated with a single site.
“So there are advantages in a more decentralised infrastructure that disaggregates processing to smaller data centres.”
Pulsant’s investment in the Milton Keynes facility is designed to support the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence and advanced computing. It meets growing demand for high-performance, sovereign infrastructure outside London.
The 1.2MW infrastructure expansion is purpose built to handle high-density computing tasks. These include intensive AI, machine learning and accelerated workloads.
The site offers an alternative to London for British businesses and US-based companies looking to gain a foothold in the UK and is located within the Oxford-Cambridge tech cluster.
The Milton Keynes site has two milliseconds’ latency to London’s Docklands area and Slough and is part of Pulsant’s national platform of 14 UK data centres interconnected by a 400Gb capable network.
Helen Munro, head of environment & sustainability at Pulsant, which has just invested £10 million in a data centre at Milton Keynes, said that while many data centre developers were involved in environmental initiatives, it was important they didn’t sugarcoat that digital infrastructure uses precious energy and materials.
“I think a lot of data centre operators are doing good work and trying to be as efficient as possible, while delivering the services that underpin how we live. But there is going to be an impact when building and operating data centres.
“The industry shouldn’t be creating the impression that digital services come without environmental cost.”
There was also a need to account for the wider digital supply chain when assessing environmental performance, Munro said. “We need broader collaboration to achieve efficiency, involving all stakeholders in the supply chain, including the manufacturer of the hardware, the energy infrastructure and value chain, and the platform using the centre.
“For a given task, we need to ask, ‘what is the most resource-effective outcome’?”
Pulsant continues to improve the efficiency of its operations, upgrading infrastructure for the lowest possible energy usage. “We buy renewable energy, but we use a location-based approach to carbon reporting in our key metrics. Users can see the broader impact of their data centre use.
“We’ve been expressing our carbon intensity in relation to co-location services, breaking it down for clients in a way you don’t always see other operators do.”
Pressure from data centres on resources in a particular area could be overcome by splitting up workloads among a series of smaller installations, she explained. “For AI workloads, very large data centres magnify the concentration of pressure on the energy network. There is also a resiliency risk in having a lot of processing operations associated with a single site.
“So there are advantages in a more decentralised infrastructure that disaggregates processing to smaller data centres.”
Pulsant’s investment in the Milton Keynes facility is designed to support the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence and advanced computing. It meets growing demand for high-performance, sovereign infrastructure outside London.
The 1.2MW infrastructure expansion is purpose built to handle high-density computing tasks. These include intensive AI, machine learning and accelerated workloads.
The site offers an alternative to London for British businesses and US-based companies looking to gain a foothold in the UK and is located within the Oxford-Cambridge tech cluster.
The Milton Keynes site has two milliseconds’ latency to London’s Docklands area and Slough and is part of Pulsant’s national platform of 14 UK data centres interconnected by a 400Gb capable network.
