While you continue your onslaught in the meme wars using your “Dank Meme Stash” and spam every comment section with the cancerous purple trash dove; you should know that your actions don’t come without a carbon footprint. Irrespective of the futility of your ideas, everything you spew out on the uncharted digital world is stored in data centers which are working 24/7, consuming electricity and producing excess heat in the process.
The power grid operator Ellevio and dark fiber provider Stokab, along with the Fortum Värme from Stockholm, Sweden have come up with a solution to placate the side effects in a rather ingenious way. They have created a mechanism to recycle the heat and use it for warming homes around the city!
Usually, the data centers aren’t very environmentally friendly, and consume about the same power as the airline industry, with the numbers tripling in the coming decade with the exponential boom in the use of the internet. The idea is revolutionary as just one of the 10-megawatt data centers can heat over 20,000 apartments.
The initiative is called Stockholm Data Parks, which aims to create
“a data center industry where no heat is wasted.”
The initiative also includes running the data centers on renewable sources and selling the residual heat to district heating company Fortum Värme. Stockholm’s district heating system has already been working on the project with smaller data centers, with Stockholm Data Parks saying on their website,
“we will bring together, prepare, and offer all necessary infrastructure elements at attractive greenfield and brownfield sites suited for data center activity.”
If the project turns out to be a success, Stockholm’s data centers could even go carbon positive with the passage of time. The project will make a 10-megawatt center lower their emissions by 8000 metric tons, which will help Stockholm achieve their goal of going fossil fuel free by 2040.
What are your thoughts on this incredible strategy? Comment below!