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2024 ESG Report.

Executive Summary

For 2024, it is estimated that about 1% of global energy usage can be attributed to data centres. The rapid expansion and planning of data centres has been fueled by the continued growth of cloud and the rising demands for AI as adoption ramps up of a technology that is likely here to stay. Despite volatility, no one wants to be left behind and without suffcient resources to meet those demands. Increasingly, data centre plans and projects have seen larger and more dense scales. For a data centre operator, meeting those demands and ensuring that there are enough resources to support their facilities is a high priority, but may come at the cost of sustainability goals.

Energy has become a major constraint in most tier 1 markets globally, and investments into alternative energy sources have become a major commitment. Total energy consumption for the data centre market increased from about 178.5 TWh in 2019 to 310.6 TWh in 2024, which represents a growth rate of about 11.7%. Commitments to reopen nuclear reactors and agreements with nuclear power developers have been seen more in 2024 especially by hyperscalers. Natural gas and even crude oil are also being sought after to ensure demands can be met. This has led to an overall increase in CO2 emissions, but emissions are also being increasingly offset and major investments in renewable and carbon free energy have resulted in an overall decrease in the average volume of emissions per GWh of data centre energy usage, decreasing from 366.9 mtCO2 e/GWh in 2019 to 312.7 mtCO2 e/GWh in 2024. This is a promising trend as data centre energy consumption is expected to grow signifcantly over the next decade.

With the scrutiny over the environmental impact of the data centre industry, it is important to be transparent about the operations and sustainability of data centres. Data centre companies have made great strides in reporting their ESG metrics, and for the 2023 fscal year, we have seen more inaugural ESG/sustainability reports being published and more promises to be more transparent. In this report, we have identifed 26 data centre providers and 9 hyperscale cloud platforms that have published an ESG report in 2023 with key sustainability metrics reported about its operations.

This report aims to provide an overview of the sustainability impact of data centres, focusing specifcally on greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption and water usage. The sustainability data is informed by published ESG and sustainability rep

Regards,
The Structure Research Team