Electricity consumption from China’s digital sector on track to increase 289% by 2035: Greenpeace

Greenpeace East Asia May 28, 2021 

BEIJING, 28 May 2021 – Electricity consumption from data centers and 5G base stations in China is on track to increase by an estimated 289% between 2020 and 2035, according to a new report from Greenpeace East Asia. In 2020, 61% of electricity that powered China’s digital infrastructure came from coal.

“Explosive growth in digital infrastructure does not need to mean growth in emissions. Technology companies have the potential to catalyze real emissions reductions via investment in distributed renewables projects and direct purchase of wind and solar energy, among other strategies. But some of the industry’s biggest players, including Alibaba and GDS, have yet to issue 100% renewable energy or carbon neutrality commitments,” said Greenpeace East Asia climate and energy campaigner Ye Ruiqi.

Carbon emissions from China’s internet industry are projected to continue to rise through 2035, long after China’s targeted 2030 national emissions peak, creating complications for the country’s national carbon neutrality commitments. By 2035, emissions from digital infrastructure in China are forecast to reach 310 million tonnes, more than three times Guangzhou’s total carbon emissions in 2019. [1] By contrast, sectors such as steel, non-ferrous metal, and cement, are expected to peak emissions around 2025.

5G is one of the fastest growing sources of internet sector emissions in China. Power consumption from 5G in China is on track to skyrocket 488% by 2035, reaching 297 billion kWh by 2035, roughly equivalent to Sichuan’s total electricity consumption in 2020.

Read more at https://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/press/6608/electricity-consumption-from-chinas-digital-sector-on-track-to-increase/

The post Electricity consumption from China’s digital sector on track to increase 289% by 2035: Greenpeace appeared first on EMFSA.

The post Australia Fires And Technology’s Climate Vampire: Why The Environmental Impact Of 5G Expansion Could Be Massive appeared first on EMFSA.

December 12, 2019  By Peter Judge

Newly introduced 5G mobile communications will drastically increase the energy demands of data centers, according to a German study sponsored by utility provider E.ON.

The report (PDF, German) from RWTH Aachen University, found that by 2025, high-bandwidth 5G networking would drive such a boost in demand for data that the energy consumed by German data centers would increase by 3.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year, the equivalent of the electricity consumed by the 2.5 million people in Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Dortmund.

Energy thirst

This thirst for energy will be triggered by new technical possibilities, the study says, including organizations building their own mobile networks, and a surge in people streaming movies. These possibilities will be enabled by small local Edge data centers, and those Edge data centers will demand power.

E.ON board member Karsten Wildberger hopes it will be possible to build in renewable sources for these facilities, right from the start: “By 2030, up to 13 percent of the world’s power requirements will be consumed by data centers. We need sustainable energy supply for that.” He says it is possible to do that already: “We are supplying data centers with clean energy or building highly efficient, decentralized generation facilities onsite, such as combined heat and power plants or fuel cells – often combined with PV systems or wind energy.”

In the Frankfurt area, network operator Syna, an E.ON subsidiary, commissioned a transformer station to secure the power supply of planned data centers in the region, and is now looking into ways to cover these energy requirements sustainably.

E.ON is also promoting the reuse of waste heat. At present, 13 billion kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity are converted into heat in German data centers, the company says, and virtually all of this is released into the environment. The RWTH study found that only 19 percent of data centers use part of their waste heat, usually to heat their own buildings and hot water.

Wildberger says the industry will have 8TWh of waste heat available by 2025, and wants to see it used: “Today, waste heat from data centers remains unused far too often. Data centers should be used to supply heat to housing estates and entire city districts. This is a very concrete and important contribution to coupling the electricity and heat sectors, which we implement together with our customers.” The company has a heating and cooling network product called ectogrid.

The company also plans to help individuals curb their energy waste with an awareness campaign called ‘Green Internet Day.’ On 8 January, E.ON will stop its usual activities on the Internet and on social media channels, and instead point to green Internet solutions.

The data center study was based on a literature search carried out by Prof. Madlener of the Institute for Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN) at RWTH Aachen University.

https://www.eon.com/content/dam/eon/eon-com/Documents/de/5G-Standard%20und%20Rechenzentren_11.12.2019.pdf

The post 5G will increase energy demands of data centers, study claims appeared first on EMFSA.

 5G Profit and Power:

Telecoms operators will need to optimize electricity consumption in 5G networks to make services pay.

The move to 5G could result in increased total network energy consumption of 150-170 percent by 2026.

Research suggests most telecommunications professionals think that 5G is likely to increase telecommunication and mobile operators’ power consumption given the additional equipment and sites needed to provide greater coverage density.

A survey of 100 global telecoms operators conducted last year by analyst firm 451 found 94 percent believed 5G would raise their overall energy costs. Internal analysis conducted by data centre infrastructure specialist Vertiv (previously the data centre power business unit of Emerson Network Power) estimated that the move to 5G could result in increased total network energy consumption of 150-170 percent by 2026.

Telefónica has made a firm commitment to reduce its carbon emissions by more than 50 percent between 2020 and 2030. Its Energy and Climate Change plan aims to reduce its operational costs and align its network expansion with a sustainable strategy going forwards.

Maintaining that ambition whilst simultaneously rolling out 5G infrastructure will be difficult however.

Nilmar Seccomandi David is head of network and system infrastructure at Telefónica’s global CTIO unit. He too feels that moving to 5G and edge computing will “most likely” increase its network energy consumption. The operator is currently examining various ways to minimize that impact, including new cooling systems to improve thermal safety, greater use of renewal energy supplies, virtualized radio cores and remote infrastructure management platforms.

Additional sites need efficient power management:

The augmented capacity, bandwidth and latency requirements needed to take 5G networks beyond existing 4G/LTE provision will almost certainly need higher density infrastructure built on additional wireless antennas and base stations to mobile traffic at the edge.

With existing sites needing to support more equipment, telecoms operators need to think more carefully about how partition existing power supplies to optimize their thermal density and cost efficiency, particularly when it comes to managing a gradual 4G to 5G transition that will need both new and legacy infrastructure approaching the end of its service life to co-exist side by side in the short term.

Many will also need to acquire extra sites at which to install radio equipment, with all the associated challenges of sourcing enough electricity to feed them and providing power backup options such as generators to ensure resiliency and failover.

Ericsson’s Linder points out that the need to increase power efficiency per site as the number of antennae and base stations increases is crucial to ensuring that mobile network operators  can either maintain or reduce their existing consumption in order to keep down the cost of deployment as well as ongoing 5G operations.

A more innovative approach to power management within both 5G network infrastructure and changes in the way telecoms operators procure and supply electricity to 5G networks will become crucial as they expand capacity and coverage over the next five years.

The growing volumes of devices expected to come online due to exponential growth in IoT/M2M connectivity, aligned with huge volumes of video data, will put steadily increasing pressure on infrastructure from day one, beginning early next year. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/analysis/balance-between-5g-profit-and-power/

5G – Zero Fault Connectivity Tolerance:

IOT and smart applications like telemedicine and remote robotic surgery — are extremely fault-intolerant. Surgeons are already performing successful surgeries, via robotic arms and 5G connectivity, from distances of up to 30 miles away from the operating room. Needless to say, systems like this cannot fail during use. And neither can communication between autonomous cars and smart city infrastructure.

With 4G, our devices connect to one piece of infrastructure at a time: one cell tower, which transmits to the next tower, and so on. But with 5G, our devices and equipment will have to communicate with multiple cell towers and other infrastructure AT ONCE if they want to achieve “zero tolerance.” https://www.actualtech.io/5g-will-change-data-centers/  Hence the need for a stable electrical supply. * See EMFSA’s post at the bottom of this page regarding Eskom and the roll out of 5G in South Africa: “5G Requires a Stable Electricity Supply”.

5G Will Require More Data Centers –  A Holistic Approach Is Needed:

Traditional data centers will not be enough. To reduce latency many more data centers will be required such as  micro data centers, or “containerized data centers,” located right on network edges (i.e. at the base of a cell tower). Data center diversification—whether through micro data centers, increased investment in proprietary data centers, colocation, or, most likely, a combination of the three—will be a critical component of any successful 5G implementation. https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/industry-perspectives/how-mainstream-5g-will-disrupt-data-center-status-quo

5G  will affect the day in and day out operations and planning that go into managing and maintaining a data center. While the thought of increased speeds, extremely low latency and IoT expansion is exciting, it’s important to take a holistic approach to how 5G technology will impact the data center.

4G technology is geared toward a “one to one” methodology. When user’s endpoint device is connected to a tower, it will transition to the next nearest tower as their location changes. This provides the user with the experience they would expect from 4G or 4.5G LTE connections.

5G connectivity will introduce the idea of “many to one” methodology as it relates to wireless connectivity. The user’s endpoint device will need to communicate with many towers or antennas at the same time in order to deliver higher speeds and lower latency. This will require more towers and antennas, which will require more data centers.

For 5G Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios, massive volumes of data collected from distributed IoT terminals and edge nodes in various industries need to be aggregated, stored, processed, analyzed, and managed in a centralized cloud data center.

The way in which we build these new data centers and retrofit the old ones will also need to adapt to meet the demands of 5G. For example, the “Three Musketeers” of the data center — power, space and cooling — will need to be revamped. 5G networks could demand up to 100x more resources than the typical 4G network.

Overall, more resources means more equipment, power and space requirements. In order to meet the specifications of a 5G ready data center, environmental impact needs to be analyzed. The increase in resources and requirements to build and/or retrofit a data center for 5G readiness could have a negative impact on emissions and carbon footprint. https://www.actualtech.io/5g-will-change-data-centers/

Image: Unsplash.com

A Lot Of Waste Heat Is Generated By Base Stations (BTS):

Usually base station sites will be cooled by air condition equipment which transfers the waste heat out of the site. However, every kW of heat power requires 1kW of cooling power and air conditioning equipment is expensive to buy, requires regular and often expensive maintenance (e.g. changing filters) and also generates noise pollution. https://www.nokia.com/blog/nokia-5g-cool-and-green/

5G Heats Up Base Stations

Inefficient conversion of RF to digital and continuous connectivity issues are causing thermal problems, threatening signal integrity and reliability.

5G Heats Up Base Stations

5G Requires a Stable Electricity Supply

The post 5G – Energy Consumption, Carbon Footprint, Climate Change: Environmental Impact appeared first on EMFSA.