As power demands continue to increase across the data centre industry, Schneider Electric remains steadfast in its commitment to sustainable solutionsWe live in an era where data consumption is skyrocketing, from two billion terabytes in 2010 to 147 terabytes by the end of 2024. As a result, the data centre industry is facing unprecedented challenges in balancing explosive growth, whilst ensuring environmental responsibility.
Confronting these challenges is Schneider Electric, a key player in the energy management sector that acts as a critical enabler of sustainable data centre solutions. The company prioritises addressing the industry’s expanding power requirements, alongside mitigating environmental impact.
“The acceleration we’re seeing in the demand for digital infrastructure requirements and data is incredibly high,” Mark Garner, Senior Vice President, Secure Power Europe at Schneider Electric, says. “This demand is driving demand for data centres, which are going to see three billion more people worldwide needing access to electricity by 2050.”
Confronting Swelling Data Demands
AI is currently driving the data centre industry as the world becomes more connected. Due to continually-rising demand, the industry cannot escape from the challenges of high energy use.
In order to drive sustainable growth, Marc explains that data centre businesses need to drive electrification and decarbonisation of energy to reach their net zero goals.
“We have to maintain and drive, build, operate and maintain efficiency and sustainability at the core of what we do,” he explains. “We are seeking to lower PUE, which liquid cooling will allow us to decrease even further.”
As data centre infrastructure is built up, Schneider Electric is aware that huge amounts of cloud infrastructure will be needed to support demand. Data centres will need to be designed specifically for the needs of AI, whilst considering future needs too.
“About 60% of the new build is focused around AI and higher density compute,” Marc notes. “Architecture is going to have to change to support that. The benefits are that liquid cooling allows us to really optimise the performance of a data centre. With these challenges, it is going to get us to the next level of efficiency in terms of data centre operation.”
Schneider Electric’s Sustainability Pledge
Already a sustainability trailblazer, Schneider Electric helps data centres optimise power and capacity. Within the business, it has its own decarbonisation agenda, which Marc says is to support greater renewable energy use within the industry.
“The more we can move data centres to renewable energy sources, the more we can start to build out renewable energies,” Marc explains. “The dynamic with our customers is changing, with data centre operators now considering themselves both producers and consumers of energy. Some produce energy from solar panels, build their own wind farms, or invest in storage. They have, in essence, their own microgrid.”
The company’s comprehensive approach includes coordinating power management, optimising systems and the strategic sourcing of clean energy.
Clean energy remains a strong priority for data centre leaders. Hyperscalers like Google and AWS started to invest in nuclear power for the first time in 2024 to operate their data centres renewably, whilst having more power to support their high-intensive workloads.
“If we can’t slow our demand for data, then we have to accelerate our clean energy usage,” Marc says. “There are actions that we can do around clean energy and decarbonised energy production that allow us to maintain our sustainability goals. Whilst we’re looking at how we deploy and deploy at scale around AI, there has to be flexibility in the design to support what’s coming in the future.”
Liquid cooling remains mission-critical
Liquid cooling remains integral to this sustainable mindset, allowing data centres to reduce or optimise energy use within facility buildings.
With this in mind, Schneider Electric is able to complete an end-to-end lifecycle with sustainability in mind, providing system design optimisation to ensure sustainability remains the priority.
Marc adds: “Cooling infrastructure is a critical system. It’s better to cool with a higher water temperature because there are greater sustainability gains – this is the type of advice that is critical for data centres in terms of the value we can bring as an organisation into the full ecosystem that’s supplying data centres.
“We’re learning every day in AI, so we’re all learning at the same time. This allows our customers to have a validated platform design to support data centre operators.”
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