No. 47: Sir Bob Geldof and I have something in common

Sir Bob and I share a common interest. Apparently he recently claimed every internet search uses as much energy as driving 65 miles. I have spent literally seconds researching this statement and can’t find any evidence that he actually said these words, but it’s clear he has been raising the profile of how much energy the IT industry uses. With us all now storing our data in the cloud there has been a surge in the requirement for massive Data Centres. A Data Centre is basically a giant fridge, filled with bank-upon-bank of computer servers, just so we can all see that photo from our childhood at a touch of a button.

The staggering fact is that around 5% of our total power demand is now used on cooling Data Centres (I spent a bit longer researching this fact, and there is lots of evidence with figures ranging between 1.1% and 10%). It is more than the aviation industry and the water industry combined.

Why am I interested in this?

Well, one of the investment areas we are interested in at Global Water Development is ‘Heating Networks’. These are great in countries like Russia or Scandinavia where the temperature is so cold for large parts of the year that a choir comprised of local brass monkeys would have no problem singing the high notes. They are not so good in countries like the UK where it is just damp most of the time.

Just as I was about to lose interest in heating networks I came across a small but experienced team who are developing plans to take waste heat from incinerators, convert this into ‘cold’ (via an absorption chiller) and then supply this ‘free cold’ to data centres. It might not be a traditional heating network but it’s very, very sexy. Its carbon neutral, can be done on a large scale and has big counterparties (eg Google) that make the project eminently bankable. The team have 4 sites almost ready to go. Sir Bob would be proud, if only he knew.     

My similarities with Sir B don’t end in our shared interest in reducing the carbon footprint of the IT sector. Whereas he was the former lead singer for the hugely successful and richly talented 1970s punk band ‘The Boomtown Rats’, I was the lead singer in a somewhat less successful and very poorly talented 1980s university group, called the ‘The Sex Kittens’ (at the time the name was meant to be ironic but it now just feels silly). Also neither of us like Mondays. We could be twins.