The gathering storm: Climate change and data center resiliency

Extreme weather events have become significantly more common and more severe in recent years — a pattern likely to continue for many decades to come. This report discusses the implications for data center owners and operators.

KEY FINDINGS

• Climate change will require many organizations to rethink and renew their overall resiliency strategies. Actions may include increasing site resiliency; upgrading backup and disaster recovery processes to real-time availability zones; and upgrading out-of-region backup capabilities.
• Although the risk of many weather-related incidents may seem low, all sites should be regularly reviewed. Extreme weather events are becoming more severe, more frequent, and are occurring in areas where they were hitherto not seen.
• Climate change risks are not confined to single sites. Risks extend to regional infrastructure, partners, utilities and, beyond that, to wider changes that may add costs and administrative burdens (e.g., increased governance/reporting requirements, a need to strengthen supply chains, and enforced technology changes).
• Increasingly, water use will be restricted in many regions, which will likely cause friction between large data center operator/builders and local communities. This may lead to lower water use but higher energy consumption.
• Data center weather risk assessments should include an economic analysis. Increasing resiliency increases costs. Insurance premium increases and climate change investments will become a significant operating cost factor in some locations.
• Data center locations will need to be re-evaluated on a regular basis to determine overall appetite for additional investment and long-term viability.
• The threat of extreme weather disruption may increase the speed of migration to public cloud and colocation environments, as part of a risk-reduction strategy.
• The global COVID-19 pandemic introduced direct and indirect risks to data center infrastructure, some of which are similar to the risks from climate change. Both threats may, therefore, coincide to reinforce the need for review and investment.
• The energy efficiency of IT equipment — which has been given scant regard by virtually all save hyperscale operators — will become a new focus of attention as pressure to reduce the impact of climate change grows.
• Cooling design points for prolonged heat will often be exceeded, necessitating augmented cooling. This will especially affect free cooling systems.
• Corporate sustainability and resiliency are separate but linked. Legislation to curb climate change will increasingly focus on industries that are perceived to be polluting, placing restrictions and imposing costs that could affect technology choices and resiliency.