The cloud in the crosshairs of the energy crisis

temps de lecture: 5 minutes

Since the end of September, the Microcity-based start-up has been marketing a platform enabling companies to measure their IT footprint.

Delphine Seitiée coordinates and leads the Alp ICT network.
The platform helps Swiss SMEs understand the challenges and opportunities of digital transformation.
In November, Alp ICT’s General Secretary and Ivan Mariblanca Flinch, founder of the start-up Canopé, together with members of the INR CH scientific committee, will publish the first study on responsible digital business.

Mark Henley

Data centers account for 3.6% of Switzerland's electricity consumption. With the Federal Council recommending measures to avoid shortages this winter, how can this energy-hungry sector reduce its bill without hampering its services?

The energy crisis is front and center in the media, politics and the economy.
And with it, the spectre of electricity shortages this winter, the extent of which is not yet clear.
Now is the time to hunt for savings and build up stocks to avoid freezing in two or three months’ time.
In fact, the Federal Council has stepped up its calls to reduce energy consumption.

While all sectors are concerned, one area is particularly sensitive: IT.
In a digitized society, where we depend almost entirely on digital tools, how can we reduce consumption in an energy-intensive sector without hampering the smooth running of the economy and services?
What about the situation in the event of prolonged power cuts, and how are players in the sector trying to cope with the difficulties of winter?

In Lausanne, Florian Koeppli is responsible for Switzerland at Nutanix, the American cloud software company: “It’s very frustrating to have to find solutions in such a hurry,” he regrets. The Swiss government should have taken the initiative, because the energy consumption problem in our sector has been known for years. Data centers alone produce as much CO2 as all the world’s aviation.”

Power-hungry data centers

Data centers consume a lot of energy.
According to a study by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, they will consume around 2.1 terawatt-hours in 2019.
That’s 3.6% of Swiss electricity consumption.
This figure also includes in-house data centers, which do not necessarily have a backup power supply.
However, “the potential for energy savings in data centers is much greater than imagined”, insists Florian Koeppli.
Which ones?

The Swiss head of Nutanix uses a car analogy: “Let’s take a Porsche Panamera that consumes 12 liters per 100 and a Citroën that consumes 6. The former is no more polluting if I have four people inside instead of driving alone. It’s the same for data centers. You have to pool space and resources.” The other point is raising public awareness: “People realize the pollution generated by an EasyJet flight to Barcelona. They have no idea of the pollution of a day spent on Netflix, because it’s in the cloud. Yet a simple Google search is 1 gram of CO2.”

Some players are greedier than others.
Start-ups and companies involved in cryptocurrencies are no exception.
Issuing virtual currencies requires computers with ever-increasing computing power.
But at what energy cost?
In Geneva, Federico Cruz is the co-founder of Crysec, a start-up specializing in crypto-currencies, which was founded in 2021: “These are extremely energy-intensive technologies. Nevertheless, the crypto world hasn’t waited for the current crisis to work on more environmentally-friendly alternatives.”

Energy-hungry bitcoin production

According to Federico Cruz, the choice of virtual currency is key: “The production of bitcoin, for example, is one of the most energy-intensive, simply because its issuance requires immense computing power. But other virtual currencies are issued in a different way, without the need for computing power. These include hedera hashgraph and solana. These two currencies have an energy cost close to zero,” insists Federico Cruz. Our mission is therefore to migrate our solutions to these currencies and make our customers aware of this alternative.”

In Delémont, Yannick Guerdat is also optimistic, but remains cautious.
The director of Artionet, an agency specializing in the creation of websites and e-commerce platforms, is fine-tuning his battle plan in the event of power cuts this winter: “All our customers’ data is hosted in data centers equipped with generators. They can last twenty-four hours. On the other hand, it promises to be much more complicated for our customers whose ERP runs on in-house servers.”

As a reminder, ERP is a software package for managing all a company’s internal processes.
For example, human resources management, accounting and financial management, but also sales, distribution, procurement and e-commerce: “In the event of a breakdown, the customer will be unable to receive orders or manage logistics”.

At large cloud providers like Infomaniak, all data centers are equipped with ultra-safe generators.
The headache in the event of power cuts lies elsewhere: “We have to provide solutions for our employees so that they can connect to the Internet. In the event of major power cuts,” continues Boris Siegenthaler, “they’ll have to drive to our generator-powered data centers to work.

Boris Siegenthaler sees the glass as half full: “Our electricity prices are frozen until 2024. This means annual costs of around CHF 1 million.
“The fact that energy prices are rising makes renewable energies competitive.
In the future La Chapelle-Les Sciers eco-neighborhood, in Plan-les-Ouates (GE), Infomaniak is building its new data center, whose energy consumption will be entirely recycled in the form of heat, enabling it to heat 6,000 homes by the end of 2023.
Proof that IT can be resilient and responsible.

Polluting Swiss companies

Delphine Seitiée and Ivan Mariblanca Flinch are also working in this field. The first is General Secretary of Alp ICT, the digital promotion platform for French-speaking Switzerland. The second is the founder of Canopé, a Swiss start-up that measures the environmental footprint of organizations’ IT systems (see PME, October 2022). Together with the members of INR CH’s scientific committee, they have carried out the first Swiss study on digital responsibility, which will be published in November. Their findings are implacable: Swiss companies are major digital polluters.

As a comparison with Switzerland, Ivan Mariblanca Flinch cites the study carried out in France. According to the company, an employee’s digital consumption during working hours generates 265 kg of CO2. Its power consumption is equivalent to 47 x 25W light bulbs in a day at the office. Worse still, 25% of software and applications purchased by employers are never used. Of the remainder, 70% are under-utilized. “This represents a waste of 16 billion francs a year in Europe,” stresses Delphine Seitiée.

On July 19, the London thermometer registered 40°C. A heatwave that caused some of Google’s and Oracle’s servers to fail due to air conditioning: “With global warming, and shortages of water and electricity, these events are going to multiply,” warns Ivan Mariblanca Flinch. So we need to slim down our companies’ digital footprint, for example by limiting the number of screens or installing 5G where it’s essential. We’re going to have to make choices. We can no longer just turn on the tap and let the water run.”