Each year, World Environment Day sparks global conversations around some of the most

important challenges facing our planet.  As the impact of dark data, rising data centre energy

use and water-intensive cooling continues to expand digital infrastructure, we ask Aoife Foley,

IEEE Senior Member and Chair in Net Zero Infrastructure at The University of Manchester, “Can tech innovation and sustainability coexist?”

“Modern enterprises continuously generate and store vast amounts of data, ranging from routine system activity to machine, sensor and user-generated input.  Much of this data is unstructured, redundant or never accessed again.  Commonly referred to as ‘dark data’, it’s becoming increasingly prevalent and contributes to growing digital waste.”

“Infrastructure and operations leaders must find meaningful ways to address the environmental impact of unnecessary data storage and prioritise renewable energy use.  Global progress has been made through energy-efficient, hyperscale data centres, which can reduce electricity demand and emissions – but locally, these facilities place huge pressure on electricity grids and complicate the energy transition.  This is particularly true in smaller countries.  Also, with heavy reliance on water for cooling, this adds strain to local resources and is often avoidable thanks to renewables.”

“World Environment Day is a timely reminder that leaders need to strengthen data management policies – identifying valuable data, eliminating dark or redundant content and working with providers that support distributed networks and dynamic load placement.  As an example, shifting workloads to off-peak periods reduces demand, emissions and costs across the board.  In addition, the sector would greatly benefit from an internationally agreed approach to data archiving – as this will prevent unnecessary digital ‘landfilling’.  While change takes time, these efforts will ultimately reduce the energy, carbon, water and land footprint of today’s data economy.”