Datacentre energy bill set to rise, creating supply and cost problems in EMEA

Datacentres in EMEA are set to face a substantial rise in energy demand in the next decade, presenting problems for electricity supply.

In the next five years the amount of energy required to power datacentres will grow by 15 percent over the the current energy bill, according to analysts Canalys.

At the moment the combined energy draw of server closets, server rooms alongside small, medium and large datacentres account for one percent of all electricity consumption in EMEA, and five percent of commercial electricity.

However, the expected rise in datacentre energy demand – expected to jump by 40 percent by 2016 – will send energy cost skyward.

This means that vendors and service providers, not to mention customers, need to think about location carefully, say analysts.

‘Virtualisation and workload acceleration technologies, as well as increasing network bandwidth, enable organisations to invest in data centers sited far beyond their traditional geographic borders,” says Canalys senior analyst Alex Smith.

“As this trend continues and the need for server proximity diminishes, energy supply risk and cost become key factors in determining the best locations for those data centers.”

This will also mean that there will be a greater emphasis on the environmental impact of datacentres, something which distie ComputerLinks has highlighted as a problem to ChannelBiz, with many countries still highly dependent on fossil fuels.

“Depending on the corporate social responsibility policies of both the providers and their customers,” Smith continues, “use of renewable, environmentally sustainable resources for electricity generation will also become increasingly important elements of the decision-making process.”