Life cycle assessment-based environmental impact analysis of a tier 4 data center: A case study in Turkey

Abstract

Data centers are responsible for 1% of the global electricity consumption, leading to significant greenhouse gas emissions. This study is considered to be the first in the literature which uses life cycle assessment to investigate the environmental impacts of a tier-4 data center operation. The impacts were calculated via CCaLC software with Ecoinvent2 database by using CML2001 method. Office supplies, electricity, water and fuel consumption, direct emissions, and end-of-life treatment where applicable were considered in the system boundaries. The results show that more than 98% of the environmental impacts are caused by the electricity consumption in the data center. It was found out that improvements made in cooling and uninterrupted power supply systems have the potential to reduce the annual impacts by approximately 15% on average. Compared to the average data center in the United States, the data center analyzed in this study was found to have approximately 20% higher impact scores. The main conclusion of this study is that it is evident that governments should provide incentives such as tax deductions to promote energy efficiency and/or renewable energy utilization in the data centers for better impact mitigation. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd