Data Centers and India's Climate Goals – Challenges, New Solutions, and What India Needs to Do

1. Data centres contain billions of tiny switches called transistors that switch electrical signals on and off.
2. These transistors are like cooks in a busy kitchen constantly bumping into each other and generating heat.
3. The smaller and faster the chips (more packed transistors), the more heat they produce.
4. A laptop is like a kitchen with one burner and needs a small fan.
5. A data centre is like thousands of laptops working together, creating heat like a huge bonfire compared to a single candle.
6. Without cooling, this intense heat can damage hardware within minutes.
7. Heat slows down electrons (like runners stuck in mud), causing chips to malfunction or fail.
8. Cooling helps maintain speed, reliability, longer lifespan, and prevents heat damage—just like water helps athletes perform better.

Cooling and Climate Challenge

1. Cooling systems in data centres use almost as much energy as the computers themselves, much like an air conditioner fighting the heat of a busy kitchen.
2. The ICT sector aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 42% by 2030 compared to 2015 levels to meet global climate targets.
3. Data centres need to reduce energy use, emissions, and water consumption to help limit global warming to 1.5°C.
4. Chips are becoming smaller, faster, and more energy efficient (like upgrading a phone without draining the battery faster).
5. As cloud service demand rises, data centres expand and produce more heat, increasing the need for better cooling.

Advanced Cooling Technologies

2 main technologies can reduce emissions and improve cooling:

a) Cold Plates (Direct-to-Chip Cooling)

1. Small heat exchangers with microchannels filled with coolant.
2. Coolant is typically 25% polyethylene glycol and 75% water.
3. Cold plates sit directly on hot chips, absorbing heat like an ice pack on a feverish forehead.
4. Warm coolant flows away to release heat, and fresh coolant replaces it, creating a cycle.
5. More efficient than fans—liquid-to-air heat transfer is 50-80% or higher.

b) Immersion Cooling

1. Chips are submerged in heat-absorbing oil instead of air.
2. Oil absorbs 100% of the heat, keeping chips cool.
3. Two types of immersion cooling:
   1. One-phase: Oil stays liquid and carries heat away.
   2. Two-phase: Coolant evaporates at low temperature, rises to cooling coils, condenses, and cycles back.
4. Benefits include reduced corrosion, higher reliability, silent operation (no fans), and lower carbon footprint.
5. Companies like Microsoft and Alibaba are already using immersion cooling at scale.

Key Research Findings by Microsoft and WSP Global

1. The team conducted a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) of cooling methods, published in Nature.
2. The study compared air cooling, cold plates, and immersion cooling on emissions, energy use, and water consumption.

Cooling Technology	Emissions Reduction	Energy Use Reduction	Water Use Reduction
Cold Plates	15-21%	15-20%	31-52%
Immersion Cooling	15-21%	15-20%	31-52%

1. Using 100% renewable energy to power data centres further boosts savings:
   1. Emissions can fall by 85-90%.
   2. Energy use can drop by 6-7%.
   3. Water demand can decrease by 55-85%.
2. The study emphasizes that switching to renewables greatly magnifies the positive effects regardless of cooling method.

Challenges and Trade-offs

1. Advanced cooling technologies require complex system designs, slowing deployment.
2. Regulations around coolant fluids vary and pose hurdles.
3. These technologies, while greener, are not perfect—switching cooling methods can create new environmental issues (like swapping plastic straws for paper straws).
4. If electricity comes from fossil fuels (e.g., coal), carbon footprint remains high even with advanced cooling.
5. Life cycle assessments reveal that sustainable solutions require system-wide thinking, not isolated fixes.

The Twin Engines of Green Data Centres

1. Combining advanced cooling (cold plates, immersion cooling) with 100% renewable electricity forms the twin engines for green data centres.
2. This combination is necessary to drastically reduce emissions, energy use, and water consumption.
3. The ICT industry's climate future depends on how effectively data centres manage cooling and energy sources.
4. Urgent upgrades in cooling technologies and cleaner energy sources are critical for meeting global climate targets.

 

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