Greenpeace report How Clean is Your Cloud? I saw mentioned in 3T magazine news is actually quite interesting reading. This year’s report provides a look at the energy choices some of the largest and fastest growing IT companies. The report analyzes the 14 IT companies and the electricity supply chain in more than 80 data center cases.
The report contains also lots of interesting background information on both IT and telecom energy consumption. I recommend checking it out. Here are some points picked from How Clean is Your Cloud? report:
Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo – these global brands and a host of other IT companies are rapidly and fundamentally transforming the way in which we work, communicate, watch movies or TV, listen to music, and share pictures through “the cloud.”
The growth and scale of investment in the cloud is truly mind-blowing, with estimates of a 50-fold increase in the amount of digital information by 2020 and nearly half a trillion in investment in the coming year, all to create and feed our desire for ubiquitous access to infinite information from our computers, phones and other mobile devices, instantly.
The engine that drives the cloud is the data center. Data centers are the factories of the 21st century information age, containing thousands of computers that store and manage our rapidly growing collection of data for consumption at a moment’s notice. Given the energy-intensive nature of maintaining the cloud, access to significant amounts of electricity is a key factor in decisions about where to build these data centers. Industry leaders estimate nearly $450bn US dollars is being spent annually on new data center space.
Since electricity plays a critical role in the cost structure of companies that use the cloud, there have been dramatic strides made in improving the energy efficiency design of the facilities and the thousands of computers that go inside. However, despite significant improvements in efficiency, the exponential growth in cloud computing far outstrips these energy savings.
How much energy is required to power the ever-expanding online world? What percentage of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is attributable to the IT sector? Answers to these questions are very difficult to obtain with any degree of precision, partially due to the sector’s explosive growth, a wide range of devices and energy sources, and rapidly changing technology and business models. The estimates of the IT sector’s carbon footprint performed to date have varied widely in their methodology and scope. One of the most recognized estimates of the IT sector’s footprint was conducted as part of the 2008 SMART 2020 study, which established that the sector is responsible for 2% of global GHG emissions.
The combined electricity demand of the internet/cloud (data centers and telecommunications network) globally in 2007 was approximately 623bn kWh (if the cloud were a country, it would have the fifth largest electricity demand in the world). Based on current projections, the demand for electricity will more than triple to 1,973bn kWh (an amount greater than combined total demand of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil).
The report indicates that, due to the economic downturn and continued energy efficiency and performance improvements, global energy demand from data centers from 2005-2010 increased by 56%. Estimates of data center electricity demand come in at 31GW globally, with an increase of 19% in 2012 alone. At the same time global electricity consumption is otherwise essentially flat due to the global recession is still a staggering rate of growth.
Given the scale of predicted growth, the source of electricity must be factored into a meaningful definition of “green IT”. Energy efficiency alone will, at best, slow the growth of the sector’s footprint. The replacement of dirty sources of electricity with clean renewable sources is still the crucial missing link in the sector’s sustainability efforts according to the report.
The global telecoms sector is also growing rapidly. Rapid growth in use of smart phones and broadband mobile connections mean mobile data traffic in 2011 was eight times the size of the entire internet in 2000. It is estimated that global mobile data traffic grew 133% in 2011, with 597 petabytes of data sent by mobiles every month. In 2011, it is estimated that 6 billion people or 86.7% of the entire global population have mobile telephone subscriptions. By the end of 2012, the number of mobile connected devices is expected to exceed the global population. Electronic devices and the rapidly growing cloud that supports our demand for greater online access are clearly a significant force in driving global energy demand.
What about telecoms in the developing and newly industrialized countries? The report has some details from India (by the way it is expected that India will pass China to become the world’s largest mobile market in terms of subscriptions in 2012). Much of the growth in the Indian telecom sector is from India’s rural and semi-urban areas. By 2012, India is likely to have 200 million rural telecom connections at a penetration rate of 25%. Out of the existing 400,000 mobile towers, over 70% exist in rural and semi-urban areas where either grid-connected electricity is not available or the electricity supply is irregular. As a result, mobile towers and, increasingly, grid-connected towers in these areas rely on diesel generators to power their network operations. The consumption of diesel by the telecoms sector currently stands at a staggering 3bn liters annually, second only to the railways in India.
What is the case on other developing and newly industrialized countries? I don’t actually know.
NOTE: Please note that that many figures given on the report are just estimates based on quite little actual data, so they might be somewhat off the actual figures. Given the source of the report I would quess that if the figures are off, they are most probably off to direction so that the environmental effect looks bigger than it actually is.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
The phrase “The data center also uses evaporative cooling, which is effective in the dry desert climate” reveals the major environmental catch in this post.
While solar panels and batteries solve the electricity problem, relying on evaporative cooling in Phoenix, Arizona creates a direct conflict with local water security.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Claims from
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19ak6aoH2M/
Let’s spend a trillion dollars on solo/ wind farms to supply 17% of the US’s power needs which requires 50 times as much arable land to build the equivalent of 40 nuclear power plants for the same sum of money. When the 40 nuclear plants can run 24 hours a day requiring minimum maintenance for up to 80 years , the renewables will be lucky to run for six to eight hours a day for maybe 15 years before they’re scrapped. Sounds like a great idea! Yes?
Tomi Engdahl says:
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AI Data Centers Could Soon Eat Up Nearly A Fifth Of America’s Power
Global data center electricity consumption is projected to reach 565 terawatt-hours in 2026, up 26% from 447 terawatt-hours in 2025, according to Gartner. The US alone will account for about 204 terawatt-hours of that total — 36% of worldwide consumption — with dedicated AI data centers responsible for 68 terawatt-hours, a full third of the US figure.
Research firm EPRI projects data centers could consume between 9% and 17% of all US electricity by 2030, up from just 4-5% today, depending on how quickly planned and under-construction projects come online. AI-optimized servers are expected to account for 31% of global data center power use in 2026, and to overtake conventional servers in power consumption by 2027.
The US Energy Information Administration has raised its national electricity demand forecast accordingly, projecting total consumption to climb from 4,097 billion kilowatt-hours to 4,283 billion kilowatt-hours by 2026, with commercial-sector electricity use — driven largely by data centers — expected to grow up to 5% annually.
Source: Gartner / U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2026
Tomi Engdahl says:
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The data center that grows its own fuel. In Germany, a data center has partnered with a biofuel company to use its waste heat to grow algae. The algae absorb CO₂ and produce oils that can be converted to biofuel. The system uses the data center’s heat to maintain optimal growth temperatures, turning a waste product into a renewable fuel source. The algae are grown in photobioreactors — clear tubes filled with water and nutrients — attached to the data center. The biofuel produced can be used for transportation or power generation. This is a pioneering example of circular economy: waste heat becomes food for algae, which becomes fuel. The same server that heats the algae is powered by renewable energy, so the whole chain is carbon‑neutral. The future of data centers is not just about computing; it’s about producing food, fuel, and heat. The cloud is growing its own energy, one algae cell at a time. The data center is becoming a farm. #datacenterheat #algae #biofuel #circulareconomy #germanyinnovation
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tomi Engdahl is there some way to recycle the water, to recover it.
Joe Eafrati Yes, it is technically possible to recapture the water vapor after it evaporates, but doing so is a massive fight against thermodynamics.
Evaporative cooling works because turning liquid water into vapor absorbs a massive amount of heat (the latent heat of vaporization).
To turn that vapor back into liquid water on-site, you have to extract that exact same amount of heat. If a facility tries to condense the vapor by running it over mechanical cooling coils, it requires massive amounts of electricity to chill those coils. The energy required to condense the steam completely cancels out the energy you saved by using evaporative cooling in the first place. Plus there will be other losses.
Joe Eafrati Closed-loop cooling—specifically when paired with dry air coolers—is widely considered superior to evaporative recycling for long-term sustainability. Eliminating operational evaporation entirely yields advantages: Zero Operational Water Loss, No “Blowdown” Chemical Waste.
The Only Catch: The Energy Penalty
While closed-loop systems solve the water problem completely, they trade water savings for higher electrical draw.
Tomi Engdahl says:
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For years, wind power has been one of the biggest forces behind the global renewable-energy boom. But the balance is shifting.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), solar PV generation is forecast to grow by around 600 TWh in 2026. That surge is expected to push solar ahead of wind, making it the world’s second-largest renewable source of electricity generation, behind hydropower.
The change is being driven by rapid solar deployment, falling technology costs and massive additions of solar capacity around the world. In 2025 alone, solar PV accounted for more than three-quarters of new renewable power capacity added globally.
Importantly, this doesn’t mean wind power is disappearing. Wind generation is also expected to keep growing—the headline reflects a shift in global electricity generation, not the end of wind energy.
Source: International Energy Agency (IEA), Electricity 2026 / Electricity Mid-Year Update 2026.
What do you think will shape the next decade of clean energy—solar, wind, or something else?
Visuals are AI Illustrated.
#SolarEnergy #RenewableEnergy #CleanEnergy #EnergyTransition #ScienceFacts
Tomi Engdahl says:
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The cloud may be invisible, but its environmental footprint is very real.
Every email, online search, and AI-generated response depends on physical infrastructure. Behind the digital world are enormous data centers filled with servers that require electricity, cooling, and increasingly large amounts of land.
As AI expands, so does the demand for these resources. The International Energy Agency estimates that data centers consumed about 1.5% of global electricity in 2024 and projects that their demand could more than double by 2030.
Water is another growing concern. Many facilities use water-based cooling systems, while electricity generation and the manufacturing of computer components can add to their wider water footprint. The impact varies considerably depending on the facility’s location, cooling technology, and energy source.
For communities already facing water shortages, grid constraints, or pressure on natural habitats, a new data center can raise difficult questions about who receives the benefits and who bears the environmental costs.
There are solutions. More efficient chips, closed-loop cooling, recycled water, renewable energy, and better site planning can reduce the impact. But these measures are not automatically enough to offset rapid growth, and some cooling technologies involve trade-offs between water and electricity use.
The challenge is not simply choosing between technology and nature. It is ensuring that technological progress does not come at the expense of the communities and ecosystems that sustain us.
No data center should be worth sacrificing a community’s access to clean water, a healthy environment, or peace of mind.
Source: BBC Politics Live, “Should we be worried about the environmental impacts of AI data centres?” (June 10, 2026); International Energy Agency, Energy and AI (2025).
Tomi Engdahl says:
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The idea is simple but unusual: place sealed computing modules on the seabed and let the surrounding seawater help remove the enormous amount of heat produced by servers.
China already has a commercial underwater data center operating off Lingshui in Hainan. The facility began commercial operations in 2023, and a newer computing module added in 2025 can hold more than 400 high-performance servers. The system has been used for AI training, industrial simulation, game development and other computing workloads.
Seawater is at the heart of the concept. Instead of relying entirely on conventional air-conditioning equipment, the underwater modules transfer heat into the surrounding ocean. This can sharply reduce the electricity needed for cooling, which is becoming an increasingly important issue as AI systems demand more computing power.
China is now taking the idea another step further in Shanghai. A new underwater data-center project in the Lingang Special Area is being developed alongside offshore wind farms, allowing electricity generated at sea to power submerged computing equipment directly. The planned project has a total capacity of 24 megawatts, with a 2.3 MW demonstration phase.
The project is designed around two resources that coastal cities have in abundance: seawater for cooling and offshore wind for electricity. Shanghai officials say the system has already demonstrated a power usage effectiveness of around 1.15, while estimates indicate electricity consumption can be reduced by 22.8 percent and freshwater use eliminated.
There is another advantage. A large conventional data center requires valuable land, while underwater modules can operate beneath the sea without occupying large areas onshore. The Shanghai project estimates that underwater deployment can reduce land use by more than 90 percent.
The approach could become especially interesting as AI computing expands. Modern servers generate huge amounts of heat, and cooling that equipment can consume a significant share of a data center’s electricity. Using the ocean as a natural heat sink offers a different way to handle that problem.
But putting expensive computers underwater creates its own engineering challenges. The pressure vessels must remain sealed, equipment has to operate reliably in a harsh marine environment, and repairing hardware is far more complicated than replacing a server inside a conventional building. Long-term reliability and maintenance costs will determine how widely the technology can be deployed.
China has also begun establishing technical standards for underwater data centers. A national industry standard for testing marine underwater data centers took effect in November 2025, covering testing methods for systems deployed in the ocean.
The technology is not about replacing every land-based data center. It is an experimental approach to a growing problem: how to provide more computing power while controlling electricity, cooling, freshwater and land requirements.
As AI pushes demand for high-density computing higher, the future data center may not always look like a giant building filled with servers.
Some of them could be sitting quietly on the seabed, powered by offshore wind and cooled by the ocean around them.
#China
Tomi Engdahl says:
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Nature’s carbon sink failing under the weight of human emissions. Carbon pollution now officially outpaces the absorption capacity of forests and oceans.
For millennia, Earth’s forests, oceans, and soils have acted as reliable planetary thermostats, absorbing roughly half of all human-induced carbon emissions.
However, scientists are sounding the alarm that this vital buffer is rapidly failing. As global temperatures climb, driven by the burning of fossil fuels and extensive deforestation, these natural carbon sinks are becoming overwhelmed and structurally weakened.
Intense wildfires, prolonged droughts, and marine heatwaves have dramatically reduced the ability of ecosystems to capture and store carbon, leaving an ever-larger volume of greenhouse gases to accumulate in the atmosphere.
This widening gap between carbon production and natural absorption threatens to trigger a dangerous feedback loop, accelerating global heating far faster than current climate models predict. When sinks like the Amazon rainforest or marine ecosystems degrade, they transition from absorbing carbon to releasing it, compounding the crisis. Experts warn that relying on nature to clean up industrial pollution is no longer a viable strategy, highlighting the urgent necessity of rapid, deep decarbonization at the source before these critical environmental safety nets collapse entirely.
source: Greenfield, P. Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature’s carbon sink failing? The Guardian.
Tomi Engdahl says:
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A groundbreaking geophysical study has revealed that human consumption of underground water reserves has grown so massive that it has literally shifted the Earth’s rotational pole.
Between 1993 and 2010, human civilization pumped an estimated 2,150 gigatons of groundwater from deep subterranean aquifers, primarily to sustain agricultural irrigation, municipal water networks, and industrial manufacturing.
Because water possesses substantial physical mass, extracting it from localized underground pockets and allowing it to eventually flow into the global ocean system alters how weight is distributed across the surface of the spinning planet.
This massive redistributive shift caused the Earth’s rotational pole to drift by approximately 31.5 inches toward the 64°E longitude line during that seventeen-year window alone, providing undeniable proof that human activity can measurably alter planetary mechanics.
Geophysicists isolate this polar motion by utilizing advanced satellite telemetry and climate modeling software to trace the exact path of the planet’s rotational axis.
As illustrated in the scientific model above, comparing the observed path (OBS) against estimates that exclude groundwater (w/o GW) reveals a massive discrepancy; only when factoring in groundwater depletion (w/ GW) does the model align with reality.
While the geographical position of the core aquifers matters immensely—with the heaviest extractions occurring in mid-latitude regions like northwestern India and western North America—the aggregate water loss simultaneously contributed 6.24 millimeters of direct sea-level rise.
While this rotational shift is too small to impact daily atmospheric weather patterns or satellite communication systems, the underlying depletion presents immediate ecological dangers, including widespread land subsidence, the collapse of structural topsoil, and irreversible saltwater intrusion into remaining freshwater basins.
Tomi Engdahl says:
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A growing wave of research is revealing that AI data centers carry a far heavier environmental cost than earlier estimates suggested. A 2026 study by Allianz Trade found these facilities emitted 286 million tonnes of CO2 in 2025 alone — around 57% higher than projections from the International Energy Agency. Separately, Cornell researchers calculated that by 2030, AI’s current growth rate could add 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, roughly equal to putting 5 to 10 million extra cars on U.S. roads, while also draining hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water each year for cooling systems. Even more surprising, new studies have found these massive server farms create localized “heat islands,” raising surrounding land temperatures by several degrees and affecting communities up to six miles away. As AI adoption accelerates worldwide, scientists warn that without major investments in renewable energy, efficient cooling technology, and smarter site planning, the environmental toll of this digital boom could scale up dramatically faster than most people realize.
#AI #climatechange #datacenters #sustainability #environment
Tomi Engdahl says:
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A new scientific model projects Earth’s drylands will eventually cover over 40% of the globe, threatening billions of lives.
Our planet is on the verge of a dramatic geographical shift. According to a new study published in Environmental Research Letters, the relentless rise of global temperatures is driving a significant expansion of Earth’s drylands—regions where water loss from soil evaporation and plant transpiration outpaces rainfall.
If current climate trends persist, these arid landscapes are projected to creep forward to cover more than 40% of the world’s total land area by the end of this century. This shift from humid to dry climates represents a looming crisis for vulnerable communities, as it threatens to spark severe water shortages, fuel desertification, and disrupt fragile agricultural systems.
While rising carbon dioxide levels may partially slow this expansion by helping plants retain water, scientists warn that the overall trend remains alarming. As drylands swallow once-productive areas, ecosystems will face unprecedented degradation, pushing millions of livelihoods to the brink.
Mitigating these shifts is no longer just an environmental goal, but a global humanitarian necessity. Adapting to this drier reality will require international cooperation, updated climate modeling, and a profound commitment to sustainable water management to secure a viable future for affected populations.
source: Cai, Y., Wang, F., Pan, Y., & Lu, Q. (2026). CO2-altered evapotranspiration moderates future global dryland expansion under climate change. Environmental Research Letters, 21(17).