This week, UNEP DTU Partnership joined the DTU High Tech Summit highlighting the needs and possibilities for green solutions within the energy and datacentre sectors.
The DTU High Tech Summit is part conference and part exhibition with a vision to create the largest research-based meeting place in Denmark within the field of digitization.
The summit aims to create the perfect environment for companies, start-ups, organisations and universities to meet and present their latest technological developments, debate the most recent discoveries, participate in matchmaking events, and generate ideas.
Datacentres – contributing to emissions or solutions
Datacentres contribute to a growing share of global emissions, along with the rest of the ICT sector, datacentres could become a significant contributor to global emissions.
In 2025 to the data centre industry is expected to use up to 20% of all electricity in the world. This means that inefficient datacentre bring irreversible economic and environmental ramifications to society and climate.
With this sobering background, UNEP DTU Partnership focused on turning ICT into part of the solution instead of part of the problem at the High Tech Summit.
The event “Powering Digital Transformation through Sustainable Datacentres” brought together industry leaders from Microsoft, and the Danish Datacentre Industry and world leading researchers from Stanford and UNEP DTU Partnership to discuss the role of datacentres in a sustainable digital transformation.
Energy efficiency focus
Datacentres have an important role to play in digital transformation with the potential to become a dynamic change agent within smart urban systems.
To explore this potential, looked at available technologies to improve energy efficiency, potential threats and what types of collaboration could facilitate a green digital transformation in countries and cities.
The event had special focus on energy efficiency and achieving a balance between load growth and corporate sustainability pledges to support UN SDG goals.
Digital energy systems
UNEP DTU Partnership was also involved in an event on digitalisation of the energy system, organised by Nordic Innovation.
The event was based on the Flex4Res project looking at transition pathways to a flexible and carbon neutral energy system in the Nordic countries.
Researchers from UNEP DTU Partnership has been part of the Flex4Res project since it’s inception, and the results are meant to go beyond application in Nordic countries and inspire energy systems transitions in developing countries as well, building on Nordic experiences.
Ending with an open floor for questions, the event sought to frame how research on Nordic energy systems can offer insights into digitalisation of energy systems to bring us cloaser to flexible and carbon neutral energy.
