Enlarge image
Data center of Deutsche Telekom in Saxony-Anhalt (archive image): »Align towards ecological sustainability and climate protection«
Photo: Jens Wolf/dpa
A power consumption of 16 billion kilowatt hours per year is so large that hardly anyone can imagine it.
This enormous sum comes together when you add up the energy consumption of all data centers in Germany.
For comparison: An average two-person household in Germany only uses 3000 kilowatt hours per year.
On a large scale, however, the energy requirements of the operators of the German data centers are not particularly high.
The power consumption of all systems together accounts for just 0.6 percent of the total energy consumption in Germany in 2020.
This was calculated by the renowned Berlin Borderstep Institute on behalf of the Bitkom digital association.
The total power requirement for cloud computing is higher.
Only systems from Germany were taken into account in the study.
Servers in the USA, Ireland and other locations that play a major role in social networks such as Facebook, for example, were left out of the calculations.
»New data centers must be operated in a climate-neutral manner from 2027«
But even without looking beyond national borders, the numbers are impressive: Measured against the maximum power consumption of the installed hardware, the capacity grew by 84 percent from 2010 to 2020.
Actual electricity consumption also increased, but not at the same pace because the energy efficiency of the systems has improved.
However, the study presented on Tuesday also shows that the hunger for electricity in data centers has not yet been satisfied, because demand will continue to rise until 2030.
And that's where politics comes in.
In their coalition agreement, the Ampel parties have dedicated a separate paragraph to data centers: “We will align data centers in Germany with ecological sustainability and climate protection, including the use of waste heat.
From 2027, new data centers must be operated in a climate-neutral manner,” says page 18.
Bitkom CEO Bernhard Rohleder can in principle agree with the demands of the Berlin government coalition, but sees the operators on the right track for a long time: "The companies are wide awake, and not just since the change of government," said the industry representative on Tuesday.
Rohleder emphasized that the companies have a high level of self-motivation to work more energy-efficiently in the future.
"That's simply because the energy costs are of such enormous importance." Around half of the costs are spent on energy.
The proclaimed goal of climate neutrality can only be achieved if sufficient electricity from renewable sources is available.
Bitkom also sees a need for action on the part of politicians with regard to the coalition's demand for the use of waste heat.
A survey conducted by the Borderstep Institute among data center operators revealed that most of them want to make greater use of waste heat.
However, 56 percent of the operators surveyed find no buyers because their waste heat is not hot enough for the suppliers.
"Existing (older) district heating networks are often unsuitable for absorbing heat from data centers at a low temperature level," says the study.
A subsidy must include a modernization of the heating networks and bring together producers and users of the waste heat.
The biggest headaches for the operators of the approximately 3,000 data centers (with at least ten server cabinets or a connected load of more than 40 kW) are the high electricity prices and what they consider to be the unnecessarily complicated approval processes in Germany.
There is a clear need for climate-friendly data centers with a high level of data protection.
“The question we ask ourselves is: is this market emerging in Germany or is it emerging outside of Germany?” said Bitkom representative Rohleder.
A strong expansion in Germany will only succeed if the approval processes are significantly accelerated and also digitized.
Frankfurt am Main is the most popular location
According to the study, when it comes to the infrastructure, what matters most to the operators is a reliable power supply and a good connection to Internet nodes.
There is a stable power supply almost everywhere in the country.
That is why no location can stand out from another in Germany.
However, there are clear differences when it comes to connecting to the network of networks.
The Frankfurt/Rhine-Main region in particular will benefit from this, which according to the study will expand its top position in Germany and Europe: the capacities there are expected to double by 2025.
»The Frankfurt/Rhine-Main region is one of the top data center locations in Europe alongside London.
Thanks to DE-CIX, one of the largest Internet nodes in the world, due to its central location in Germany and Europe and also because of Brexit, the location is continuing to grow.« The result: around a fifth of the total electricity consumption in the city is accounted for by data centers, i.e. far more than the national average.
Berlin is now in second place in Germany, where Google, among others, is looking for a location or a partner for a data center.
This is followed by Munich, Hamburg, Cologne-Düsseldorf and Leipzig-Dresden with increasing demand.
Demand is only stagnating in Stuttgart and Nuremberg.
With the expansion of capacities, the importance of the systems for the labor market is also increasing.
»The German data centers are important employers.
They currently employ around 130,000 full-time workers, and another 80,000 jobs are directly dependent on them,” said Rohleder.
Jobs would also be created in the vicinity of data centers if other companies settled there.
In the study, 60 percent of the data center operators surveyed stated that they intend to make investments to expand their locations in the next two years.
Christoph Dernbach/dpa
