Power-hungry data centres set to stretch resources

KARACHI: With Pakistan’s digital needs expanding at a rapid pace, the country is becoming prime territory for more data centres, raising concerns about their impact on already stretched water and energy resources.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a ‘data centre’ is a facility that consolidates an organisation’s IT infrastructure and resources, enabling the storage, processing, and distribution of data and applications.

According to the US Department of Energy, just one large-scale data centre requires over 100MW of electricity, enough to power around 80,000 households. And, aside from being extremely power-hungry, data centres are also very thirsty.

Research scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a public research and development centre in the US, estimate that the average data centre uses 300,000 gallons of water a day for cooling, which is equivalent to water usage in almost 100,000 homes.

While there are currently just 22 data centres listed in Pakistan, as per the database, Data Center Map, this number is set to grow. Analysis by digital technologies advisory firm Kepios shows that internet users in Pakistan increased by over 27 per cent between January 2023 and January 2024 alone.

This represents around 24 million people. More digital users means more digital data that needs to be stored and processed. This is where data centres come in. “Pakistan is a high potential land where digital transformation can be seen from public sector entities to private businesses,” said Jan Urbik, global chief sales officer of Czech software company IceWarp. This statement came as the company announced that it was all set to invest about $1 million in Pakistan to set up a data centre in Pakistan back in May. As the number of data centres grows, so will the demands on Pakistan’s energy and water systems and its environment.

According to Shahzad Arshad, chairman Wireless and Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan (WISPAP), “A nation like Pakistan, where the energy supply is already under considerable strain, the additional demand from data centres places further pressure on our electricity grid. The need for a stable and reliable power supply is paramount to their efficient operation, but frequent power outages necessitate the use of backup diesel generators, which negatively impact the environment”.

This problem is compounded by Pakistan’s increasingly stretched water resources. “As the number of data centres grows, so too does their demand for water, further exacerbating our limited resources. Pakistan has shortage of both water and power” says Arshad. However, water and energy are not the only ways data centres tax the environment.

Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri, executive director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), a non-profit research organization based in Islamabad, argues that “e-waste [and] dated hardware when disposed of improperly are a source of environmental pollution”. That being said, Dr Suleri points out that “employment and forex generated through data centres [are] an excellent opportunity.

However, it has to be done in an environmentally responsible manner, and there are ways to run and maintain “green data centres”. The “use of renewable energy can minimize demand [for] thermal energy. Whereas use of recycled water for cooling purposes can conserve freshwater”, says Dr Suleri.

The growth in demand for data centres is not exclusive to Pakistan but in line with broader global trends. The annual Electricity 2024 report from the International Energy Agency, an independent intergovernmental organization that provides data, analysis and policy recommendations related to the global energy sector, says that data centres consumed an estimated 460 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2022 and that by 2026 this figure could more than double to over 1000 TWh.

This is around the electricity consumption of all of Japan. Bloomberg Analysis claims that the AI boom is only turbocharging the demand for data storage and processing services, driving demand for data centres and the energy they need after an era of relatively flat energy demand. Power demand is now expected to grow by 40 per cent in the US over the next two decades after having grown at just 9 per cent over the previous two decades.