By Paul Tincknell, ISG Global Asset Recovery Leader and Strategist at Lenovo

Data is everywhere and is growing exponentially. This requires vast amounts of Energy and data centres are struggling to keep up. This is particularly evident during heatwaves, as even more energy is needed for cooling.

When people use a computer or a smartphone, they rarely think about what it costs in terms of energy. But even something tiny, like adding more names to a list of people copied on an email, will have a real, measurable energy cost.

With the cloud now the default way of working for businesses in almost every sector, the amount of energy used by data centres is ever increasing: currently up to 1.5% of global electricity demand, according to the International Energy Agency.

But solutions exist to reduce the impact of our data centres worldwide. And it’s not some exotic new technology – it’s tried-and-tested hardware which already exists, combined with a fresh way of thinking about the environmental impact of data centres.

Part of the problem is that servers have a long lifetime: up to 10 years. As new servers come in, older machines may move away from being business-critical to being something that sits at the back of a data centre, but still draws lots of power. Every data centre has machines that no one is quite sure what they are doing – but people are too afraid to switch them off.

Reviving equipment

As a consumer, you tend to buy a new machine if your PC is going slowly. Servers sitting in a data centre are a very different matter. They keep on working, even when the hardware is inefficient, outdated and power-hungry.

Refreshing your inventory, especially older assets, can quickly pay for itself by reducing the amount of energy that servers draw.

In past decades, many business decision makers imagined that choosing the ‘green’ option was always going to cost money. But what we are seeing today is that the best economic solution also happens to be the most sustainable solution. If you reduce the amount of power your servers consume in the data centre, your power bill goes down at the same time as your emissions.

How crucial are asset recovery services?

Often, if you replace old hardware, you’ll also end up doing the job far more efficiently, with one new box taking the place of 10 or 20 old ones. Updating old hardware doesn’t just cut costs: there’s also a welcome cashflow boost that provides opportunities to improve sustainability to help meet ESG goals, thanks to Asset Recovery Services.

Every year, the world generates 50 million tonnes of e-waste, enough to cover the island of Manhattan, according to UN statistics. And while Lenovo’s latest research finds that 70% of organisations are already using data to achieve a mix of ESG and financial goals, more needs to be done.

For companies hoping to achieve their ESG goals, an Asset Recovery service helps in finding the optimal method to dispose of hardware – whether that’s recycling, refurbishing, reusing, or scrapping in an environmentally friendly way. Organisations need clarity and policies around how this is done – equipment can’t be simply thrown into a skip.

Businesses also need to ensure that their asset recovery services work with partners to the highest standards. This removes risk from the customer – there’s no danger that the partner will find a loophole to ship the waste abroad and dump it in landfill. This is another important way to safeguard reputation.

Recycling servers in this way generates a lot of ‘wins’. If a company gets a few thousand pounds back for the old hardware, they can buy CO₂ offsets for the new hardware. Of course, carbon offsetting can’t be your only plan for sustainability, but if companies invest in UN-approved CO₂ offset projects like reforestation and green power initiatives, it’s a useful tool that can help demonstrate ESG commitments.

Maintaining data security

Protecting customer data has become ever more important for businesses, thanks to privacy regulations such as GDPR. Making sure that data is handled and wiped in the correct manner has moved up in the agenda for businesses, so that sensitive information does not fall into the wrong hands. So, in the same way that disposing equipment in a suitable manner is vital, managing and destroying data from these devices in a way that is safe and secure is just as important.

Where once this might have been purely an IT problem, it’s now also a problem for the CFO or other members of the senior leadership team. That’s another reason why choosing the right asset recovery service is so crucial; it ensures that sensitive information is correctly handled and destroyed in line with regulations.

Towards the future

Data centres will increasingly face regulation and demands for transparency over their energy and water usage. The European Commission is reportedly set to announce a plan to call out and clamp down on data centres’ environmental impact. By 2025, this could see data centres having a ‘label’ which details their energy usage, just like dishwashers and other home appliances do today.

For consumers, buying from sustainable brands is playing an increasing role in purchasing decisions. Across all generations, from Baby Boomers to Gen-Z, sustainability is now more important than a brand name when buying a product, according to research. Consumers are increasingly conscious of the ESG credentials of businesses, meaning that organisations cannot afford to have unsustainable practices in their data centres.

Meanwhile, sustainability has become a differentiator in the battle for talent – before people start working at an organisation, they are beginning to evaluate how it treats the environment – with Bupa research finding that one in three would turn down roles in companies with poor ESG credentials. Sustainability is only going to become more significant for employees, investors and governments, and the importance of data centres and their power consumption will continue to grow.

Going forward, not meeting sustainability targets for a business is going to be almost as bad as not hitting financial targets. This comes in addition to the subsequent effects of climate change itself, with Lenovo’s research finding that 59% of senior executives expect the threats of global warming to have a moderate to severe impact on their business. Yet, although executives recognise these challenges, few have near-term plans in place to address them. Only 33% are taking steps in the next three years to tackle global warming.

There’s no question that data centres can’t continue as they are. Action must be taken by vendors, partners and customers in order to control data centres’ energy consumption. Only after this can sustainability take centre stage and propel data centres into the future.

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