With more companies switching to cloud service providers, we are seeing a drastic increase in the amount of electricity required to run the data centers that are hosting all the machines required to run these platforms. Currently, data centers produce 3% of global carbon emissions, which is roughly 1.5% of the worldwide electricity demand.
Here at Civo, we’re firm believers that cloud shouldn’t cost the earth. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Deep Green to create a partnership focused on cleaner cloud computing being available to our customers. We all have a responsibility to reduce our carbon footprint, and this is just one way we’re looking to reduce our emissions and move towards a climate-positive future. We’re excited to step into this role as an exclusive partner and help take Deep Green to the next level to build a fairer and more sustainable future for cloud.
How can data centers reduce carbon emissions?
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the data centers and data transmission networks that underpin digitalization have led to rising energy use. They state that “the biggest opportunity for tech companies is to leverage their power to bring fundamental changes throughout the energy system, beyond just their own supply”.
In the graph below, we can see the shift over the past 12 years, whereby cloud providers' energy usage has grown by almost 500% (134 TWh).
Source: IEA global data center energy demand by data center type, 2010-2022
Supporting the utilization of waste heat from data centers is one of the core recommendations set out by the IEA to help combat the increasing carbon emissions. They suggest that waste heat can be used to help heat nearby commercial and residential buildings or supply industrial heat users. This is where companies such as Deep Green come in as they work to reduce carbon emissions. The system runs on zero-carbon electricity, and the swimming pools this heats is able to reuse 90% of the energy, meaning each kWh of energy is effectively used twice.
Mark Bjornsgaard, CEO of Deep Green, explained more on this, “Energy is expensive, and precious. So many organizations and communities struggle to afford the heat they need to exist. Yet so much energy, so much heat, is wasted everyday by data centers. That’s what Deep Green is fixing, and in the process dramatically reducing overall carbon emissions. We’re excited to have Civo’s customers join us on the journey. For too long, compute infrastructure has contributed to the problem of climate change. Now it can be part of the solution.”
How is Deep Green helping this movement?
Before we delve deeper into our partnership, it's crucial to understand who Deep Green is and what they stand for. Deep Green provides climate and society-friendly compute by taking the heat generated by their edge data centers and putting it to good use.
This all began when CEO Mark Bjornsgaard installed a small computer data processing center beneath a pool and used the energy generated by it to heat the pool. They have gone on to help a range of industries that use large volumes of hot water, such as swimming pool owners, distilleries, and large apartment blocks, and reduced their energy bills.
With such a robust background in sustainable tech solutions, our collaboration with Deep Green was a natural fit.
Selecting a Deep Green region on Civo
All users are now given the option to select the Deep Green region (DG-EXM) from our range of regions; from here, you’ll be able to run your cloud workloads on Deep Green’s Exmouth systems. As Deep Green continues to expand, you’ll be able to run your workloads at a range of Deep Green data center sites, with your compute used to generate heat in communities across the UK.
Overall, this partnership means that users choosing the Deep Green region will be running their instances using 100% renewable energy.
As always, we are offering access at a competitive price and have kept pricing consistent across regions to encourage more people to pivot to green solutions. In a recent Forbes article, Mark Bjornsgaard, spoke about how this has been achieved by explaining, “Deep Green captures 90% of the heat produced by servers and puts it to good use by using it to provide free hot water. Deep Green’s solution reduces energy bills and environmental costs for organizations that require significant amounts of heat, such as swimming pools, food manufacturers, and textile firms, amongst many.”
The future of cloud computing is green
This partnership with Deep Green will give users the opportunity to run their cloud workloads on Deep Green’s servers, giving them access to a sustainable cloud solution. This aims to help organizations move towards a sustainable and net-zero future and provide Deep Green with a constant workload to generate zero carbon heat to power its community-based projects.
Over the next few weeks, we will continue to share more about this partnership and how you can use the Deep Green region. In the meantime, check out Deep Green’s website for more information.
