14 September 2018
EC Lab’s Director, Dr Rabih Bashroush, was invited as a speaker to the roundtable discussion titled, “Data Centres and Climate Change – how can we develop and encourage best practice?”, and chaired by MPs Antoinette Sandbach (Conservative) and Daniel Zeichner (Labour), on 12th September 2018.
The roundtable discussed how to tackle some of the key myths and misconceptions around data centres and climate change, and build on the recommendations of the report ‘Is Staying Online Costing the Earth?‘.
After the event, Dr Bashroush said:
Very productive meeting and roundtable discussion today chaired by MPs Antoinette Sandbach (Conservative) and Daniel Zeichner (Labour) on data centre energy efficiency and policy development as part of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change and Data Analytics. We discussed some of the current challenges, such as the excessive number of small server rooms that are difficult to maintain or make energy efficient. We also highlighted the need for policy and legislation to focus on such issues rather than large data centre operators who already follow best practices. The problem with low server utilisation was also discussed, where according to our EURECA research findings, the average server utilisation currently stands at 20%. However, it was also acknowledged that increasing server utilisation was not a simple task.
For further information about the event, please visit: https://www.policyconnect.org.uk/appccg/events/roundtable-data-centres-and-climate-change-how-can-we-develop-and-encourage-best-practice