The world’s 20 largest data center companies have set ambitious targets to cut the carbon emissions from their giant portfolios. The vast majority of them are moving in the wrong direction — fast.
These businesses include technology giants like Google, Amazon and Meta and owner-developers like Blackstone’s QTS and Digital Realty. The revelations from a first-of-its-kind investigation by Bisnow show that time is running out for these companies to achieve the environmental targets they committed to before the growth of artificial intelligence spurred a huge acceleration in the data center build-out.
Data center development is expanding exponentially, and the companies that own and use data centers primarily rely on fossil fuels to power them, creating emissions that are heating the globe. Many are building their own gas-burning power plants to ensure they get more computing power online faster.
That means the path to limiting carbon output to a level that keeps climate change in check is getting far narrower, experts told Bisnow. With data center construction responsible for an increasingly large share of economic growth in the U.S. and beyond, money is trumping the environment.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Ciara Long over at Bisnow
