Three ways data centers can operate more sustainably

Date:
Sat, 21 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Description:
How cooling, circularity and smarter workloads can cut data center impact.

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Over the next decade, the energy demands of data centers will continue to
grow worldwide as AI workloads scale, placing new pressure on power grids, water resources and operating costs.

This is forcing operators to rethink how digital infrastructure is planned, built and operated but data center operators cannot optimize for a single constraint without creating knock-on effects elsewhere. James Pennington Social Links Navigation

Global Sustainability Services Director at Lenovo. Decisions about cooling, location and hardware procurement all carry consequences for water availability, grid stability and global supply chains. Data centers are tightly coupled to the systems around them. Article continues below You may like Liquid cooling vs air cooling: the five key differences for data centers Solving AI's energy challenge: sustainable data centers for a competitive UK future No wonder there's a bubble - study claims nearly all of the worlds
data centers are built in the wrong climate

They interact with power grids, requiring careful thought about where power supplies come from, and, importantly, with water supplies. Large hyperscale data centers can consume up to 2.5 billion liters of water annually, equivalent to the needs of approximately 80,000 people, according to UK Government estimates.

Data centers also have an impact on supply chains, driving demand for specialized equipment, skilled labor and chips.

Addressing these pressures requires data center operators to look beyond any single metric and manage sustainability as a set of connected trade-offs.

There are three key areas data center operators can focus on to make rapid
and measurable gains in sustainability: the efficiency of cooling systems, increased circularity around reuse and recycling, and workload management.
Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Improving cooling efficiency Energy constraints are becoming a limiting factor for data center growth. GPU -dense AI workloads are driving up power density and overall energy demand.

Today, much of the energy used by data centers is not used for computing at all, but for cooling components, with 43% of energy used in U.S. data centers going to cooling, rather than computing.

Data center efficiency is commonly measured using power usage effectiveness (PUE). PUE is the power required to run the whole data center, divided by the power demands of the IT equipment within. In simple terms, the lower we can get the PUE ratio, the better. What to read next How rising complexity is reshaping the role of data center services AI vs. AI: Using intelligence to solve the energy strain of data centers Barely any EU data centers are actually ready for AI - and upgrading could be a costly challenge

Liquid cooling has an important role to play here. Liquid cooling uses water to remove heat from components and remove heat more effectively than traditional air-based systems.

Water cooling can reduce power consumption by up to 40%, and some liquid-optimized data centers have already hit PUE levels of 1.1, meaning far less energy is lost to cooling and other non-computing overheads.

As a result, a smaller proportion of total energy is diverted away from computing, enabling data centers to be far more sustainable. Designing for circularity Today, only a small proportion of data center infrastructure is actually recycled or reused at end of life. For data center operators, designing hardware for reuse and longer lifecycles can yield rapid results in terms of curbing waste and emissions.

Asset recovery services for data centers are designed to handle environmentally responsible disposal and recycling of IT hardware, including servers, storage, and networking equipment. Adopting circular economy approaches can be a practical first step on the sustainability journey for many organizations.

Improving reuse and recycling delivers clear, practical benefits, including the recovery of valuable materials and reduced pressure on new manufacturing across the electronics industry. Everything from how components are designed to how they are shipped and how they are disposed of at end of life has a measurable impact.

As a service models can also reduce overprovisioning by aligning capacity
more closely with actual demand. In cooling systems, circularity can also
have an impact. Hot water from todays warm-water cooling systems could be
used to heat offices or nearby homes to help curb the environmental impact of data centers.

Closed-loop, circular cooling systems also have a role in reducing water use. Older evaporative cooling systems tend to be more water-intensive, particularly in warmer or water-stressed regions. Moving to closed-loop systems which use liquid-to-air heat exchangers can curb the water demands of data centers. Reducing wasted compute Workload management is another key factor, and one that is all too often overlooked. The most effective energy savings often come from eliminating wasted compute rather than improving hardware alone. Every watt that is spent in the data center should be translated into meaningful computing output.

Virtualization can help to minimize idle capacity and maximize usage, by allowing multiple applications to run on the same server.

By ensuring that every workload makes effective use of the hardware it runs on, workload efficiency helps align sustainability goals with performance by increasing utilization and reducing idle capacity.

Updating older systems can also have important sustainability benefits. Newer architectures tend to deliver more performance at lower energy costs.

Switching to an as a service model for infrastructure means that data center operators can provide up-to-date hardware without the up-front capital expenditure usually associated with technology refreshes.

Warm-water cooling systems can also help, allowing components such as GPUs to operate more consistently at higher utilization without thermal throttling. Data center operators should take a gradual one workload at a time approach
to build momentum incrementally towards wider systemic change. Making sustainability operational The increasing demands placed on data centers by
AI workloads mean that operators will have to focus more on sustainability in the coming years. Physical infrastructure and workloads need to be planned together, connecting physical efficiency, such as cooling and power delivery, with how workloads are designed and run.

Circularity will also grow in importance, as will the measurable gains of as-a-service models. By dealing with each facet of digital infrastructure and how it interacts with wider society, data center operators can make sustainability a practical, operational part of how data centers are planned and operated. We've featured the best green web hosting. This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro



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