The Netherlands is home to one of the largest internet hubs in the world and is a hub in the digital global economy. This makes us a good location for internet companies with their data centers. That leading position costs a lot of energy, but fortunately according to the data centers it is usually green.
One of the largest internet hubs in the world is located in and around Amsterdam: the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX). Large internet cables from, for example, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Scandinavia come together in the data centers of AMS-IX.
A lot of international internet traffic ‘travels’ via the internet hub in Amsterdam. Our country is also connected to the worldwide web via AMS-IX. This allows us to visit websites from the United States or, for example, make video calls to someone in Australia.
Thanks to our good digital infrastructure, the Netherlands is very popular with internet companies to build their data centers. But that has a downside: power consumption.
“People often think that data centers are unnecessary energy guzzlers,” Laura Beukers of the Dutch Datacenter Association (DDA) tells NU.nl. “But without data centers, almost no app on your phone works and you can’t visit websites or watch Netflix.”
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According to Statistics Netherlands, the electricity consumption of Dutch data centers in 2021 amounted to more than 3.5 percent of the country’s total electricity consumption. By way of comparison: that is more than three times as much as the electricity consumption of all trains in the Netherlands.
Between 2017 and 2021, the consumption of Dutch data centers will more than double, according to Statistics Netherlands. This is because we have added large new data centers and expanded existing data centers.
Data centers worldwide are becoming increasingly efficient
Globally, internet power consumption is growing at a slower rate. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global internet traffic in 2020 will be nearly seventeen times higher than in 2010.
In the same period, the energy consumption of the Internet has increased by up 10 percent. This means that data centers are becoming increasingly efficient and energy-efficient.
Due to the gigantic electricity consumption of Dutch data centers, the data center industry is regularly under fire. According to NU.nl climate reporter Jeroen Kraan, it rubs with Dutch climate policy. “But viewed from the global climate, it makes no difference whether a data center is located in the Netherlands or elsewhere.”
‘Rather the Netherlands than a country without an eye for the climate’
“In the Netherlands, there is a lot of attention for sustainability and the climate,” says spokesperson Zoë Derksen of the Dutch Datacenter Association (DDA). “That is why a data center is better located in our country than in a country with less attention to the climate.”
According to Derksen, the Dutch data center industry tries to limit its impact on the climate as much as possible: “Almost all data centers that are affiliated with the DDA only use green electricity.”
In addition, according to Derksen, energy is the largest cost item for data centers. “There is therefore a great incentive to save energy and to make it more sustainable.”
Government obliges energy saving
According to Kraan, the energy price is not the only figure that companies calculate. “For companies, it can be cheaper to use older and less energy-efficient servers for a little longer than to invest in new and more energy-efficient equipment.”
To prevent this, the Dutch government has introduced a so-called energy saving obligation imposed. This, for example, obliges data centers to take energy-saving measures if the payback period is less than five years.
AMS-IX shows that a lot of energy can be saved. The internet exchange replaced the so-called switches in one of its sixteen data centers in Amsterdam. This reduced energy consumption by 85 percent. The node will now also implement this measure at other locations.
The Dutch government itself also set a good example. 64 old and small ICT rooms were merged into five large data centers. This now saves 50 percent energy.
2023-08-19 14:55:00
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