Powering Digital Transformation through Sustainable Datacentres

Meet us at the High Tech Summit 2019 where UNEP DTU is hosting a track on Powering Digital Transformation through Sustainable Datacentres.

Datacenters have an important role to play in digital transformation. Today’s datacenters have the potential to become a dynamic change agent within smart urban systems.

The growth of inefficient datacentre brings irreversible economic and environmental ramifications to the society. Currently, the world’s datacentres consumed 3% of global electricity with a growth project to 20% by 2025. These power hungry datacentres now are responsible for 2% of global CO2 emissions, a similar share of the entire aviation industry. This value potentially will escalate to 14% by 2040.

What are the potential threats to the sustainability brought by digitalization? What are the available technologies to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions of datacenters? What types of collaboration could facilitate a green digital transformation in countries and cities? This track aims to bring sustainable datacenter development into the public eye and to spark up a conversation across various sectors and value chains.

PROGRAMME

Introduction: “Transforming Worldwide Energy Efficient Datacentres”, Xiao Wang, UNEP DTU Partnership

Tech Talk: “How green is your software? An overview of frameworks and tools”, Ana Cardoso, Postdoc. UNEP DTU Partnership

Tech Talk: “Designing Sustainable Urban Systems for Next Gen Data Center”, Susanna Kass, Stanford University

UN Talk: “Sustainable data centers within smart urban systems and their relevance to Sustainable Development Goals”, Hani Dodin, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe

Business Talk: “How Cloud computing helps build intelligent solutions to benefit the environment”, Ole Kjeldsen, Microsoft

Fireside chat: “What Do Datacentres Need to Provide to Enable Sustainable Cities? “

Moderator: Susanna Kaas

Panel: WHO, Invest in Denmark, Microsoft