While data center construction and consumption continue to hit record highs, they are also coming under fire for consuming huge amounts of electricity and water, emitting greenhouse gases, and generating landfill waste without producing tangible products – such as cars, homes, and steel. But in fact, our production and life, whether it is video streaming, online shopping, online social networking, immersive video conferencing, industrial processes and production control, etc., all leave the output of the data center. The digital world requires a considerable amount of processing and storage power, which is the driver of the exponential growth of data centers. How to improve the energy efficiency of data centers, reduce the impact on the environment, and the challenges brought by power supply have also become the current topic of concern.

As a global leader in infrastructure construction and digital services for data centers and key industry applications, Schneider Electric releases “The Visible Future – New Trends and Breakthroughs in the Data Center Market” at the beginning of each year based on deep industry insights and practices to reveal what will happen in the data center industry in the New Year. What trends will affect the future direction of the data center industry (these trends are likely to take years to come) and what these changes and trends mean for data center operators? Below are the emerging trends predicted by the Schneider Electric Data Center Global Research Center for 2023.

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Trend 1: Data centers will start to focus on the carbon footprint from the supply chain

As more data centers shift to renewable energy, carbon emissions related to energy consumption (Scope 2) become a smaller percentage of the overall data center carbon footprint. At this point, carbon emissions from the construction and operation phase supply chain (Scope 3) will become the largest source of data center carbon emissions. However, the data center industry’s understanding and accounting for Scope 3 is very limited, mainly due to a lack of reliable vendor data, a lack of quantitative tools, and a lack of accounting methods. In the future, the quantitative evaluation of scope 3 will be one of the most important issues facing the data center industry. Schneider Electric has previously published a white paper and tradeoff tool related to Scope 3, the Data Center Full Life Cycle Carbon Footprint Calculator, to help the data center industry “insight” into Scope 3 emissions by providing accounting methods and quantitative tools about Scope 3 to optimize decisions to achieve net zero carbon emissions earlier. Schneider Electric advocates that suppliers must provide data center operators with scope 3 emissions data related to the products used in the data center to further drive the industry-wide reduction process. Scope 3 Best practices for reducing emissions include extending server life cycles, sourcing efficient green and low-carbon products, and improving utilization across the board, from IT to physical infrastructure.