As data needs are rocketing, the demand for data centers is growing. As noted by Savills, a data center project with a scale of about 9,300 m2 uses the same amount of energy as 15,000 households.

The amount of power required to operate and cool millions of server clusters alone has increased by 10% in the past decade. It is estimated that this amount of electricity accounts for 2% of the entire electricity demand in the United States.

Each year, data centers consume enough electricity for an average economy like Iran. Environmental organization Greenpeace has indicated that Google's server centers will use about 476 Mw if all of them operate at full capacity. That amount of electricity is enough for the whole city of San Diego to use for consumption purposes.

Similarly, data centers use more electricity than the entire U.S. auto industry combined, roughly half of what the chemical industry (the largest consumer of electricity) uses.

By 2030, the amount of electricity used by data centers is likely to increase 15 times, accounting for 8% of projected global demand.

Meanwhile, older data centers often contain many devices that are difficult to optimize, or are even unhelpful. In 2017, Jonathan Koomey - a consultant - conducted a survey of more than 16,000 servers. He pointed out that a quarter of these machines still consumed electricity even though they were idle because they were not turned off.

The big challenge today is that global energy costs are constantly setting new price levels. World Bank data shows that the energy price index increased by 26.3% in the first four months of 2022 and by 50% from January 2020 to December 2021. This trend reflects strong growth in global coal, oil and natural gas prices.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), improving data center energy efficiency will have positive implications for securing global electricity while helping to reduce CO2 emissions.

Green model

As global energy costs continue to rise, data centers are forced to look for more sustainable and long-term solutions. Google and other tech companies are also trying to develop new and more economical technologies.

A common solution is to place data centers in areas with cool climates. In August 2018, Google announced that it had successfully transferred the cooling control system in some data centers to a system using AI algorithms. Google will run their data centers entirely on renewable energy such as solar and wind.

A Facebook spokesperson said their new data center saves up to 40% of electricity compared to the old ones. The project was launched by Facebook in 2011 to share computer hardware and software solutions to help save energy.

As noted by Savills, in order to "green" the operation process, many data center projects around the world are applying a variety of advanced technologies. 

Installing modern equipment can increase investment costs for real estate developers. However, if they are willing to spend a fortune to deploy the necessary technologies, performance in data centers will improve. From there, the project will meet the increasing needs of customers as well as achieve the goal of reducing the PUE index.

Besides technology applications, many data centers are also taking advantage of renewable energy sources. Of those, geothermal, wind, solar, hydro or nuclear are popular energy sources loaded at the project. The most typical is the rooftop solar panel system. This is a sustainable energy source, helping investors avoid dependence on the provided electricity.

In Vietnam, the data center market is forecast to record a compound annual growth rate of 14.6%, reaching $1.6 billion by 2025. This is occurring due to the popularity of Big Data, Cloud Computing or Internet of Things.

In the coming time, the demand for data centers in the country is expected to continue to increase. The Cushman & Wakefield Competitiveness Index report indicates that Southeast Asia will be the fastest growing region in terms of data centers over the next five years, with an expected compound annual growth rate of 13% over the period of 2019-2024. The young and dynamic workforces of Indonesia and Vietnam will promote information technology, e-commerce and digital banking.

To catch up with the data center trend, investors in Vietnam need to have sustainable development directions right now.

Duy Anh