New paper in Environmental Science and Policy on policy responses to rapid data center growth

How can governments manage the rapid growth in digital and energy infrastructure required to support growing computational activity, and which approaches have been deployed during the past five years, a major data center expansion phase ? A new paper by lead author and HKUST PhD candidate Ian Varela Soares explores this question by comparing policy responses to the recent expansion of data centers in the US, Singapore, UK, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands. Other co-authors include Masaru Yarime and Magdalena Klemun. The paper was published today in the journal Environmental Science and Policy.

The paper shows that policy approaches vary widely across countries, ranging from the gradual tightening of data center performance standards (e.g., in Frankfurt, Germany) to more disruptive moratoria for new data center construction (e.g., in Singapore). While moratoria are effective emergency responses to curb data center resource consumption and political opposition, they can also reduce the credibility of governments’ digital infrastructure strategies. Across the six cases, better forecasts of digital infrastructure energy consumption, along with improved coordination among regions with varying availability of electricity and data transmission infrastructure, emerge as elements of sustainable digital infrastructure planning.