The Cost of Data
summary
Data centers consume an estimated 200–500 TWh/year, about 1–3% of global electricity, with the UK using ~303 TWh for comparison. AWS pledges 100% renewables by 2030 yet lists only five carbon‑neutral zones and keeps expanding us‑east‑1; carbon offsets slow but do not remove emissions. Google matches each kWh with renewables and publishes a CFE metric aiming for 24/7 carbon‑free by 2030. Practical tools and evidence include cloud sustainability console and costofdata.dev.
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chapters (21)
- 0:00Start
- 1:35Every piece of data is stored somewhere
- 3:11Cloud providers
- 4:23How do they keep things running?
- 4:54Redundancy
- 5:14Servers are demanding
- 6:431 TWh = 1 trillion watts of energy/hour
- 7:281-3% of global electricity
- 8:14Fossil fuels
- 8:34Impact depends on energy source
- 9:212% of greenhouse gas emissions
- 10:22What are we doing about this?
- 12:38Carbon offset
- 14:00US-East-1
- 15:45Lack of transparency
- 21:44We've already started solving for this
- 23:36Migrate to a green region
- 24:49Hold companies accountable
- 28:40Web Manifesto
- 29:34We are using a finite resource
- 30:49We can push the needle forward
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