Green Data Center (Global Market)

2024: The volume of the global market of "green" data centers for the year reached $71.47 billion

In 2024, costs in the global green data center (DPC) market amounted to $71.47 billion. Almost 40% of this amount fell on the North American region. Such data are presented in a study by Precedence Research, the results of which TAdviser got acquainted with in early August 2025.

The sector of environmentally friendly data centers demonstrates steady positive dynamics. Hyperscalers, cloud providers and authorities of different countries are increasingly aware of the impact of such facilities on the environment, and therefore, when designing new and modernizing existing sites, great attention is paid to energy efficiency. The key factors for market growth are:

• The use of renewable energy sources;
• Development of server processors and other components with reduced power consumption;
• Increase the life of IT equipment in order to reduce electronic waste;
• Implementation of corporate sustainable development programs;
• Strict environmental restrictions;
• Improvement of data center infrastructure;
• Implement flexible and scalable modular data center architectures;
• Use of advanced heat removal systems such as direct liquid cooling, submersible cooling, etc.

Artificial intelligence has a significant impact on the industry. Neural networks are able to quickly analyze the readings from sensors in the data center to identify anomalies, predict power spikes and redistribute resources. Many companies are implementing smart systems to address energy security, reduce carbon emissions and improve efficiency.

At the same time, the authors of the study highlight a number of restraining factors. Building or upgrading a data center using eco-friendly technologies and equipment such as renewable energy, advanced cooling systems and energy efficient servers requires significant upfront costs. Despite the long-term benefits, some companies may consider such decisions untested or risky, which prevents investment from attracting. Additional funds are required to implement specialized energy management software, sophisticated power distribution systems, and efficient HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems.

In 2024, North America led geographically with a share of about 39%: the region is home to the sites of leading cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Europe is in second place with 30%, and the Asia-Pacific region closes the top three with 23%. This is followed by Latin America at 5%. The Middle East and Africa secured a contribution of 3%. The Asia-Pacific region shows the highest growth rate: the number of data centers here is increasing due to the growing demand for computing power and storage resources . Globally, significant industry players are named:

• ABB;
• Asetek;
• Delta Electronics;
• Digital Realty Trust;
• Cisco Systems;
• Dell Technologies;
• Equinix;
• Fujitsu;
• General Electric;
• NPE;
• Huawei Technologies;
• Hitachi;
• IBM;
• Schneider Electric;
• Siemens.

Precedence Research analysts believe that in the future, the CAGR in the market under consideration will be 18.56%. Thus, by 2034, spending may increase to about $392 billion.^[1]

2014:20% of all IT equipment just warms up the atmosphere

According to the Uptime Institute, 20% of all IT equipment does not perform any useful functions and only "warms the atmosphere" (spring 2014 data). So those data centers (data centers) that go to dismantle such equipment are achieving significant savings.

In order to draw attention to this problem (which is sometimes called the problem of'servers - phantoms'), Uptime held a special competition. Within its framework, she invited data center managers to share information about the events that they conducted in order to increase the economic efficiency of their facilities. The results were quite impressive.

Top-ranked Uptime company Barclays brought 9,124 servers out of its fleet in 2013. Their total power consumption was 2.5 MW and they occupied 588 server racks. If this equipment continued to work, then the electricity bill that the company would have to pay would be more than $4.5 million.

In addition, Barclays saved another $1.3 million in maintenance on dismantled legacy hardware and freed up more than 20,000 network ports and 3,000 storage area network (SAN) ports.

In second place was Sun Life Financial, which dismissed 441 servers. At the same time, 54 of them were replaced by newer and more efficient models, and 75 were turned into virtual servers. Thanks to this event, the company hopes to reduce power consumption by 115 kW in a year, which corresponds to a savings of $100,000. Another positive consequence was the release of the useful area of ​ ​ the data center.

2012

Energy saving and ecology are the main trends

The main trend in the construction of data centers for several years ahead will be ecology and energy saving. According to Pike Research's forecast, the green data center market will reach $45.5 billion by 2016 compared to today's $17.1 billion.

In the fall of 2012, Pike Research experts said that the almost 3-fold growth of the market is due to large-scale changes that are taking place both in the field of power and in relation to business to data centers. The data centers of the future must be energy efficient, adaptable to new business needs and new technologies. Another important trend is virtualization, which ensures the most optimal use of IT resources, data center space and its energy.

One of the main reasons for the transition to green data center technologies is the desire to change the balance of cost, efficiency, reliability and capacity of the data center for the better. Taking care of the environment does not contradict business: the energy efficiency of the data center is equally useful for the environment and for the customer. Thus, the customer can get serious savings and increase in data center efficiency by paying attention to new technologies in the field of cooling and energy management in data centers.

"Undoubtedly, one of the main reasons for the popularity of" green "data centers is to reduce the cost of their operation. All equipment manufacturers also began to focus on the wishes of customers and introduce "green products" into their equipment line. For example, highly efficient uninterruptible power supplies, diesel stations with low fuel consumption and high environmental performance. The latest trend is DIBP (dynamic uninterruptible power supplies). At the same time, using the latter, the customer receives significant savings in his costs in the future for 5-10 years, "explained Sergey Dvoynov, executive director of the Solutions in to power the Group of Companies Hyted (Hidden)."

Strengthening the media image

The second equally important reason for the transition to environmentally friendly equipment is the media image. It is not so much the fashion for "green" technologies that is important, but the harsh criticism from the press, which harms the company's ecology. For example, a serious damage to Microsoft's reputation was an article published in 2012 in the New York Times. It said the tech giant installed 40 large-scale diesel generators in Washington's suburbs and refused to take action when electricity consumption went beyond the legal limit.

In the domestic data center, environmentally friendly and energy-saving solutions are used only to improve economic indicators, said Alexander Blinov, senior manager of the marketing directorate of the business segment of VimpelCom. "Green technologies will come to Russia only in 3-5 years," he said.

Experts agree that the growth of the green data center market is a matter of the near future.

difficult to predict the dynamics of growth in the construction of" green "data centers, but growth is inevitable. First, today the discussion in the media on this issue is yielding positive results. Secondly, a number of steps by server equipment manufacturers, such as reducing operational range requirements, automatically increase the greenness of data centers. And thirdly, all major manufacturers of engineering equipment focus on energy efficiency. In addition, time is running out and advanced technologies are getting cheaper, respectively, the construction of a "green" data center is becoming economically attractive, "said Konstantin Zinoviev, technical director of the engineering systems center of the system solutions department of IBS

One of the main trends in connection with the development of concern for the environment is cloud storage technologies. Thus, Microsoft representatives, in response to attacks by journalists, said that "our company is extremely concerned about the evolutionary development of the information structure of data centers and software equipment that is used to operate them. We are confident that cloud technologies will ultimately help improve efficiency and utilization. "

See also

• Overview: Commercial Data Centers
• Data Center (Data Center)
• Key Data Center-Based Services
• Colocation
• Russian Data Center Market
• Trends in the Russian data center market
• Cloud services (Russian market)
• Russian IaaS market
• Data Center Economy Measurement
• Container Data Centers
• Data Center Technologies: Solid State Drives (SSDs)
• Global Data Center Market
• Top Trends in the Global Data Center Market

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