The role of data centers in building a sustainable future

Data is the fabric of our connected world.

The rise of streaming and enterprise cloud adoption have driven an explosive surge in computing demand, giving rise to data centers around the world.

Now, a new wave of demand driven by data-hungry generative AI applications is arriving, and it’s bringing with it increasing environmental pressures.

From 2020 to 2025, data usage is expected to quadruple. As data centers grow, so does the demand for power. To ensure a sustainable future for all, it’s now vital to increase energy efficiency and find creative ways to cut down on power consumption while still supporting the world’s expanding need for data.  

Data centers are changing to support sustainability

With NTT being one of the world’s largest data center companies, with more than 100 data centers in over 20 countries around the world, we recognize the important responsibility to help create a sustainable future and have developed systems and solutions to support energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. 

• In Japan, the Mitaka data center’s building structure was designed to curve outwardly so hot air can escape more easily while cold air enters from below the building. Inside the data vaults, a secondary, highly efficient cooling system is deployed in addition to traditional conservation techniques to create the most highly efficient data center possible.  

• In Santa Clara, California, one of the big challenges is the use of water. California has been in a drought for many years, so NTT is very conscious of how resources are used. A highly efficient cooling system has been designed that moves cold water down across fan walls adjacent to the data center. This blows the air over the cold water and creates chilled air that runs into the data vaults. At the same time, once the water has warmed up after running across the coils, it is run up to the roof and uses outside air to re-cool the water, then push it back down in that system. It runs a continuous cycle, so no fresh water is needed.   

• In Germany, at the Berlin data centers, a system has been developed to handle the heat that’s created within each center. Rather than simply exhaust it into the environment, it is captured and reused to heat the offices adjacent to the data center. This delivers free heat to neighbors and enables part of the solution for carbon-free energy use. 

NTT Data Centers in Germany, Japan, and California and all over the world include unique solutions deployed today but are all small pieces of a much bigger effort. New solutions and technologies are continuously under development to address environmental concerns and support global sustainability goals.

Other technological developments are underway – including transitioning from electronics to photonics for networking, computing and other devices with low power, high capacity and ultra-low latency characteristics, or putting data centers in space for less climate impact. This is not being done alone.  NTT believes that collaborating with partners around the world on innovative solutions like these will make things better today for a more sustainable tomorrow. 

Learn more about the future of data centers.