[THE VIEW]Global AI Competition Hinges on Data Centers

The Importance of Operating with Renewable Energy
South Korea Must Also Adopt Self-Sufficient Models

Recently, with the global heatwaves and extreme climate events occurring more frequently, energy efficiency has become a critical issue across industries that can no longer be postponed. Such climate changes have especially highlighted the urgency of managing data center operations, which consume enormous amounts of electricity. Data centers play a pivotal role in providing core services of the digital economy such as cloud computing, streaming, and artificial intelligence (AI), but their operations involve massive energy consumption, placing a significant burden on the environment.

Improving the energy efficiency of data centers amid the challenges posed by climate change is an essential task for sustainable digital innovation. Currently, data centers worldwide account for over 1% of total electricity consumption, and this figure continues to grow due to the expansion of the IT industry and the explosive increase in data demand. Therefore, the rate of increase in energy consumption by data centers is expected to accelerate further in the future.

To address these issues, global companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft (MS) are actively operating data centers based on renewable energy. These companies maximize the use of renewable energy by building data centers in countries such as those in Europe, the United States, and Northern Europe. In particular, in Northern Europe, natural cooling technologies that utilize the cold climate are widely applied, significantly enhancing energy efficiency.

Domestic IT companies like Naver and Kakao are also expanding their investments in technologies to improve the energy efficiency of data centers. However, South Korea faces limitations in securing space for large-scale data centers due to its relatively small land area and high population density. Therefore, the direction can shift toward developing small-scale, high-efficiency data centers or modular data centers through technological innovation. Introducing energy self-sufficient models combined with renewable energy can greatly strengthen competitiveness. In this way, developing and adopting energy-efficient technologies and actively utilizing renewable energy will be important tasks going forward.

If Korean data centers fail to improve their energy efficiency to meet global standards in the future, the IT infrastructure costs for domestic companies will increase significantly. Falling behind in cost competitiveness could lead to a decrease in foreign direct investment and negatively impact the overall Korean economy. The sustainability of data centers in the global AI industry is not merely a matter of cost reduction. It is closely related to environmental responsibility, and as international demands for carbon neutrality intensify, companies that fail to respond risk being increasingly excluded from investment opportunities. Therefore, maximizing energy efficiency through technological innovation and actively adopting renewable energy is essential now more than ever.

In the future, data centers will be operated in ways that optimize energy consumption by utilizing AI and the Internet of Things (IoT). Additionally, new models such as modular data centers and energy self-sufficient data centers will emerge, reducing energy consumption while optimizing performance. Ultimately, the sustainability of data centers will be a crucial factor determining the competitiveness of the global IT industry, representing a path to simultaneously achieve environmental responsibility and economic benefits.

Yunseok Son, Professor at the University of Notre Dame, USA