Our increasingly digitised world places ever-greater demands on where and how we store that data. The boom in artificial intelligence, driven in particular by recent advances in generative AI, adds further pressure on a speciality sector that’s increasingly mainstream. AI demands far-greater power supply and a higher density of servers, translating into a higher burn rate for energy.

Few people currently concern themselves with the energy impact that we create by using our devices. But the consumers of AI and other digital services do need to consider the environmental footprint they cause. Head offices are certainly starting to factor those considerations into decision making. Data centre investors naturally follow suit, or risk investing into obsolete assets.

It is easy to see why the issue has yet to come to the fore for the general public. The emissions and waste products of households and manufacturing are often literally easy to see. It may even be easy to pict