Impacto medioambiental de los Centros de Datos

More than 4 billion people use the Internet worldwide. This massive use of technology seems to be totally internalized, and it seems magic that everything works properly and with the immediacy we’re used to. But what makes the Internet work this way? Well, basically, there are two fundamental elements: data centers and network connections. A Data Center is, as the name implies, a “Data Center” or a “Data Processing Center”. We could say that they are the new factories in this digital world.

00:34 - For every website, search or video upload, these centers give access to the information and store it on the thousands of computers that form a data center. The Internet we interact with day after day is basically an elegant interface to access these servers. These data centers need an immense amount of power to function optimally, because these servers release an immense amount of heat that needs to be dissipated. Much of this energy relies heavily on fossil fuels, which have a huge impact on greenhouse gas emissions. But the need for energy that the Internet infrastructure doesn’t necessarily mean that electricity needs to have a high emission footprint attached to it.

01:19 - Today there are big tech companies, such as Facebook and Google, that are betting for a greener Internet, investing in renewable energy and trying to use energy as efficiently as possible. The Internet can provide us with a lot, but it will only be a positive environmental force when its core stops running on fuels from an earlier era. .