How are data centers absorbing the growing energy demands of the digital transformation?

Roger Süess, what is the current situation in your data centers regarding energy efficiency? And is there more scope for action?

Our data centers run on 100% renewable energy, which is also used twice. We provide our market services using green energy, create services for the whole of society, heat homes and supply process heat. This highlights the importance of being close to residential areas in order to avoid any energy waste. We’re now faced with the challenge of building data centers as energy efficiently as possible and running them as sustainably as possible. As ever, of course, we still have to overcome some obstacles such as finding suitable building land, and dealing with increasingly complex regulatory measures and also, in some cases, applicable building regulations, all of which can restrict us in terms of implementing our designs.

Very few people realize that with every ChatGPT query, every vacation photo posted and every online purchase, vast amounts of data are generated and lots of energy is consumed. Do you envisage any new ways of cushioning this externally generated energy demand in the data centers?

This is a major topic for us. We’re already operating with high energy efficiency in our data centers. One example would be how we extract waste heat and make it available. However, much greater potential lies in further optimizing hardware and software. By way of comparison: customer systems account for 70 to 80 percent of a data center’s energy consumption. Potential improvements could be made, for example, through having leaner code, more efficient hardware, higher operating temperatures and new cooling concepts. Crucial to future efforts to increase overall efficiency will be how all stakeholders, namely customers, suppliers, software developers, energy suppliers and data center providers, cooperate with each other.

Green is the leading data center operator in Switzerland. We offer internet, communication and hosting services, operate several data centers with geo-redundant security, cloud and connectivity solutions, and develop individual infrastructure-as-a-service solutions for companies of all sizes, from SMEs to globally active companies and hyperscalers.