Increasing global warming has increased the need for renewable energy and green technologies. Green technology not only offers a sustainable option to reduce CO2 emissions, but also a huge potential to improve our lifestyle. In this blog post, we will look at the many benefits of green technologies.
Energy requirements for data centers will increase massively in the USA
McKinsey expects electricity demand for data centers in the USA to rise to 600 terawatt hours by 2030. By comparison, Switzerland consumes around 60 terawatt hours of electricity per year.
One terawatt hour corresponds to 1,000 gigawatt hours or 1,000,000 megawatt hours. Or 1,000,000,000 kilowatt hours. Expressed the other way round. One billion kilowatt hours equals one terawatt hour.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a major driver of rising energy demand. There are several reasons for this:
- Computing-intensive processes – AI models, especially in the area of machine learning and deep learning, require immense computing power.
- Exponential data requirements – AI systems are extremely data-hungry. Processing, storing and analyzing large amounts of data, from image and video data to text and sensor data, consumes a lot of power, especially in data centers.
- Real-time and edge computing requirements – AI applications, such as autonomous driving, connected cities (smart cities) or the Internet of Things (IoT), rely on real-time data processing, which often takes place at multiple locations and at high speed. This requires additional energy-intensive systems, such as edge computing devices, to analyze data in real time.
- Demand for ever larger models – As the race to develop ever more powerful AI systems continues, so do the demands on computing power. Advanced models such as ChatGPT or image generators (e.g. DALL-E) are growing in size and complexity, further increasing power requirements for training and deployment.
- Artificial intelligence for green tech and energy management – AI is being successfully used to promote sustainable solutions and efficient energy use, for example through smart grids and energy optimization in industry.
- Data center growth – To meet increased demand, companies are expanding their data centers or moving workloads to the cloud, where huge server farms are operated. These data centers not only require energy to operate the hardware, but also to cool the facilities.
Data center cooling is a crucial factor because this process generates a lot of heat. Cooling not only contributes to the security and performance of data centers, but is also crucial for energy efficiency, operating costs and the ecological footprint of modern IT infrastructures.
Investments in companies that develop technical solutions for data center infrastructure are attractive because they are ideally positioned to benefit from the global digitalization trend, sustainability goals and the increasing demand for high-performance data centre infrastructure. They offer investors the opportunity to invest in a stable, fast-growing and technologically innovative market.
As part of the semi-annual rebalancing at the beginning of November, we made targeted investments in the following companies in the “Green Tech Portfolio” and the “Green Tech ESG Equity Fund”:
Company
- ABB
- Alfa Laval
- Eaton
- Linde PLC
- Schneider Electric
- Stantec
- Trane Technologies
- Quanta Services
Expertise
- Grid Connection
- Thermal Technologies – heat recovery
- Power monitoring, security solutions (cyber risk)
- Back up power (hydrogen)
- Hardware – modular Solutions
- Data center design
- Operations – HVAC management
- Immersion cooling (Tauchkühlung)
Data centers are the backbone of the digital transformation by providing the necessary computing power for cloud services, AI or IoT applications. With the increasing demand for data processing, cloud storage and digital networking, the need for energy-efficient solutions is also growing. Companies that develop technologies to optimize energy consumption and improve the efficiency of data centers will be increasingly in demand.
Daniel Brühwiler, CEO