Data Centres Face Reckoning as Carbon Pressures Rise

Data centre executives are now having to consider carbon emissions alongside the traditional metrics of cost and performance, as sustainability pressures continue to reshape infrastructure strategies. 

The environmental cost of a data centre is looming, despite being ‘out of sight out of mind’, as Mat Brown, Technical Lead, Data Centre & Sustainability at Nutanix, explains.

“We often imagine digital infrastructure as clean, weightless and invisible,” he says. “Yet, somewhere between the moment a customer taps an app and a transaction completes, electricity is consumed and carbon is released. 

“Multiply that by millions of workloads running continuously worldwide, and the impact becomes impossible to ignore.”

The measurement challenge extends beyond simple electricity consumption. Goldman Sachs Research projects power consumption from data centres could rise by 160% by 2030, making infrastructure efficiency choices increasingly critical for organisations with public sustainability commitments.

Mat observes that companies typically examine supply chains, buildings and travel policies when targeting emissions reductions. 

“But the data centre has remained a blind spot,” he says. “That's starting to change.”

Assessing the physical footprint of the digital world

Mat explains that the future where data centres must start strategising with carbon in mind is arriving fast. He explains that carbon cost is no longer theoretical, but instead a rising pressure point for businesses with public sustainability goals.

“Modern applications and services rely on extensive IT infrastructure and while digital services may not directly produce smoke or exhaust gases, the servers that support them do draw power — lots of it,” Mat says. “Data centres sit at the heart of today’s digital ecosystems and their energy demand is only expected to grow.”

Mat explains that companies that are seeking to cut emissions often consider their supply chains and buildings first – but that this is now starting to change.

“The key insight is that emissions are not fixed. The same workload can produce vastly different emissions depending on where it runs and how that region generates electricity,” he says. 

“From what we’ve observed at Nutanix, even small shifts in where workloads run, particularly to regions using cleaner energy, can lead to real emissions savings, without affecting application design or user experience.”

How Nutanix is tracking emissions

Nutanix uses its Carbon and Power Estimator to help users calculate the approximate annual power and carbon emissions for various Nutanix solutions. 

Organisations using this application have discovered that small adjustments can result in significant carbon savings.

“For example, moving a general virtualisation workload with 200 virtual machines (VMs) from Poland to France could reduce estimated annual emissions from 34 metric tons of CO₂ equivalents (MTCO₂e) to just 2 MTCO₂e,” Mat says.

“This means emissions performance can now sit alongside cost and availability as a practical consideration in IT strategy.”

IT teams can also lower emissions by selecting colocation or public cloud providers that operate with low Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) to prioritise renewable or cleaner energy sources. 

As use of renewables across national grids increases, however, Mat notes that operational emissions from electricity use will continue to fall and put a greater emphasis on embodied emissions. 

“These are the emissions associated with manufacturing, transporting and installing the IT equipment itself and in countries like France, they may already account for more than half of the total lifecycle emissions,” he says. “Factoring in embodied carbon is becoming essential for organisations looking to account for the full environmental cost of their infrastructure choices.”

Embodied emissions are also becoming more significant and could soon outweigh operational emissions, Mat says, arguing that these emissions are critical when making infrastructure decisions. 

“To address this, many hardware manufacturers are now publishing lifecycle analyses (LCA) or product carbon footprint (PCF) documentation,” he explains. “This helps organisations make more informed decisions about when and how often to refresh infrastructure.

“With the right tools, businesses can make decisions that balance cost and sustainability, without sacrificing control, performance or flexibility.

Understanding the impact of IT infrastructure

Extending the useful life of existing hardware can reduce embodied emissions, but Mat explains that this must be balanced against the performance and efficiency gains offered by newer technologies, in addition to operational risks. 

“At Nutanix, we’re seeing growing interest from customers looking to “sweat” their assets beyond the traditional five-year refresh cycle, in some cases extending to seven years or more,” he says. 

“Sustainability is often a key motivation, alongside cost efficiency. As low-carbon electricity becomes more common across global grids, we expect more IT leaders to take a lifetime impact approach when planning their data centre strategy.”

The importance of visibility is paramount, as this is the starting point for businesses to understand the total environmental impact of IT infrastructure. This remains an ongoing process, given that estimating impact still varies by region, Mat says.

“Tools that model energy consumption and emissions across different IT footprints give organisations a much clearer picture of their carbon impact,” he adds. “With this insight, IT leaders can rebalance workloads, align infrastructure choices with ESG goals and demonstrate credible progress to stakeholders.”

This level of visualisation could ultimately shift how the industry approaches climate action and deliver what Mat calls “ a practical lever for change”.

As regulatory pressures increase, particularly when it comes to data centre emissions transparency, this type of tracking could soon become a lifeline for businesses. 

“Every digital decision is now an environmental one. The decisions made in a boardroom about cloud strategy, data residency and infrastructure architecture can carry just as much weight,” Mat explains.

“The path to net zero won’t be paved by pledges alone. It will be built through thousands of small, data-informed decisions. These are not glamorous changes. But they are powerful.

“And in the race to reduce emissions, they might be the ones that matter most.”

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