The Foundations of the Future report recently commissioned by techUK, and developed by Henham Strategy, raises many points for consideration. It is an important attempt at quantifying the UK’s data centre assets. As a sector, the UK data centre industry is worth £4.7 billion in Gross Value Added (GVA) annually, supporting 43,500 jobs and contributing £640 million in tax revenue to the exchequer.
It’s now critical to use this to make more informed decisions about where and how to deploy digital infrastructure and technologies to direct this growth sustainably.
Henham estimate that we have 450 data centres in the UK, on average designed to support up to 6.3MW of IT power demand. That’s an immense amount of computing power and NESO’s Clean Power 2030 report predicts electricity demanded through UK data centres to increase fourfold to 2030.
There is much explanation of how specialist data centre operators have focussed on minimising resources consumed in supporting their clients’ technologies and getting smarter about maximising co-benefits we can bring to the wider system. That is important.
But if we – as an industry – are set to experience such huge growth, there is still an environmental cost. Can we ensure that our services deliver greater increases in social value?
This is a far bigger question than should be answered by data centre developers and operators alone. It needs a collaborative answer.
Energy and material resources are not infinite; and investments in technologies must be as much as possible, strategic, informed decisions about how to maximise effectiveness. That is not just an issue of what technology consumes but also what it delivers.
There are significant opportunities to do better and get smarter about how and where technology services are deployed, that can bring benefits to regions across the UK.
But – to paraphrase Peter Parker’s uncle Ben - with the incredible opportunity – and power to effect change - that this sector now enjoys, comes an equally important responsibility: to ensure that the transformation that follows this technology delivers on its potential.