The environmental footprint of data centers in the United States

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dc.contributor.authorSiddik, Md Abu Bakaren
dc.contributor.authorShehabi, Armanen
dc.contributor.authorMarston, Landon T.en
dc.coverage.countryUnited Statesen
dc.date.accessioned2022-04-26T12:55:32Zen
dc.date.available2022-04-26T12:55:32Zen
dc.date.issued2021-06en
dc.description.abstractMuch of the world's data are stored, managed, and distributed by data centers. Data centers require a tremendous amount of energy to operate, accounting for around 1.8% of electricity use in the United States. Large amounts of water are also required to operate data centers, both directly for liquid cooling and indirectly to produce electricity. For the first time, we calculate spatially-detailed carbon and water footprints of data centers operating within the United States, which is home to around one-quarter of all data center servers globally. Our bottom-up approach reveals one-fifth of data center servers direct water footprint comes from moderately to highly water stressed watersheds, while nearly half of servers are fully or partially powered by power plants located within water stressed regions. Approximately 0.5% of total US greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to data centers. We investigate tradeoffs and synergies between data center's water and energy utilization by strategically locating data centers in areas of the country that will minimize one or more environmental footprints. Our study quantifies the environmental implications behind our data creation and storage and shows a path to decrease the environmental footprint of our increasing digital footprint.en
dc.description.notesL M acknowledges support by the National Science Foundation Grant No. ACI-1639529 (INFEWS/T1: Mesoscale Data Fusion to Map and Model the US Food, Energy, and Water (FEW) system). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the United States Department of Energy and operated under Contract Grant No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.en
dc.description.sponsorshipNational Science FoundationNational Science Foundation (NSF) [ACI-1639529]; Office of Science of the United States Department of EnergyUnited States Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-AC02-05CH11231]en
dc.description.versionPublished versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abfba1en
dc.identifier.issn1748-9326en
dc.identifier.issue6en
dc.identifier.other64017en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/109747en
dc.identifier.volume16en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/en
dc.subjectwater scarcityen
dc.subjectdata centeren
dc.subjectwater footprinten
dc.subjectcarbon footprinten
dc.subjectwater-energy nexusen
dc.titleThe environmental footprint of data centers in the United Statesen
dc.title.serialEnvironmental Research Lettersen
dc.typeArticle - Refereeden
dc.type.dcmitypeTexten

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