When people imagine a data centre, it’s often reduced to a sterile, industrial structure cold, humming, and unremarkable. But take a closer look, and you’ll discover something much deeper. A data centre is a sophisticated, powerful environment where vast streams of data move, evolve, and shape the digital systems we depend on daily. In some ways, it feels almost magical.
So does the natural world
Both deserve our respect. Yet, as our digital infrastructure continues to expand at an incredible pace, the natural world is shrinking. Since 1970, nearly 75% of global wildlife populations have disappeared. This contrast underscores a growing tension, and opportunity, between technological advancement and environmental renewal.
Balancing Energy in a Changing Landscape
Data centres are core components of our energy ecosystem, drawing a constant and significant amount of electricity. But the nature of energy production is evolving. As we shift toward renewable and decentralized energy sources, power availability is becoming less predictable, fluctuating between surplus and scarcity.
To remain sustainable in this new context, data centres must go beyond traditional efficiency metrics like Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) or Renewable Energy Factor (REF). It’s crucial to consider the timing and location of clean energy access and adjust consumption accordingly. In the next stage of the energy transition, adaptability, not just efficiency, will be key to resilience.
The Hidden Environmental Toll of Technology
The digital realm may appear intangible, but it’s grounded in very physical systems: servers, fiber optics, semiconductors, and scarce minerals. Producing these technologies is resource-heavy and carbon-intensive, and many components have short life cycles. At the root of this is extraction, and with around 50% of critical mineral reserves located on or near land stewarded by Indigenous or rural communities, the environmental and ethical stakes are significant.
Honouring these origins means extending the usable life of hardware, creating designs that support reuse, and ensuring materials at the end of their life are fed back into responsible supply chains. We must place value not just on what digital tools enable, but on the resources and impacts involved in creating them.
Turning Knowledge into Meaningful Action
We already have a wide array of tools at our disposal, impact databases, carbon and biodiversity tracking platforms, green building standards. Yet there remains a gap between awareness and actual implementation. Nearly half of digital infrastructure companies have committed to achieving net-zero emissions, but only about a third have calculated their Scope 3 emissions: the indirect impacts related to suppliers, construction, and full life-cycle activities.
Without this level of insight, progress will remain vague. Worse, we lose the opportunity to engage users, businesses, developers, everyday internet users, in a more honest dialogue about what it really means to use technology sustainably.
A Cultural Shift Is Essential
Creating a sustainable digital future requires more than technological upgrades. It demands a shift in mindset, one that recognises the value of the resources, communities, and ecosystems supporting our digital life.
This cultural transformation calls for innovation, openness, and collaboration across every layer of the value chain. The future of tech isn’t just about faster hardware or greener power, it’s about finding harmony between digital systems and the natural world, and respecting both as essential and interdependent.
