Sustainability laws set to drive real change

Nearly 15 years ago – in 2008 – Uptime Institute presented a paper titled “The gathering storm.” The paper was about the inevitability of a struggle against climate change and how this might play out for the power-hungry data center and IT sector. The issues were explored in more detail in the 2020 Uptime Institute report, The gathering storm: Climate change and data center resiliency.

The original presentation has proven prescient, discussing the key role of certain technologies, such as virtualization and advanced cooling, an increase in data center power use, the possibility of power shortages in some cities, and growing legislative and stakeholder pressure to reduce emissions. Yet, all these years later, it is clear that the storm is still gathering and — for the most part — the industry remains unprepared for its intensity and duration.