Balancing Data Growth and Environmental Sustainability

Summary

Ever-growing data volumes translate to more energy consumption by data centers. With all-flash storage arrays from Everpure, organizations can reduce power consumption, lower cooling costs, and build a more sustainable future.

With climate concerns and energy uncertainty continuing to top headlines, organizations across every industry continue to embrace sustainability as a priority, although we now talk more about “energy intelligence” — the ability to measure, predict, and optimize how energy is consumed across digital infrastructure for the sake of turning power from a cost center into a controllable, strategic resource.

Proactive business leaders understand that having an energy intelligence strategy in place helps them increase the efficiency of their operations while still meeting their customers’ needs. In contrast, those taking a do-nothing approach are increasingly finding that their decision is a recipe for greater risk and future losses.

With so much at stake, organizations are looking for new ways to reduce their reliance on resources and build a sustainable model for the future. This includes considering the impact of data centers—especially as data volumes grow. Because data centers consume natural resources, they play an undeniably important part in any corporate sustainability strategy.

Data Volumes Are Exploding

Data center workloads continue to increase at an exponential rate, with over 181 zettabytes of data expected to be generated this year alone. Growing mobile and cloud-computing traffic, as well as expanding development and adoption of AI, are all contributing to this growth. By the end of 2025, AI workloads are projected to consume nearly half (up to 49%) of the total power used by data centers worldwide, according to recent estimates by energy analysts and the International Energy Agency.¹

Yet, for the majority of organizations, their current data center infrastructure won’t be sufficient to keep up with their future data center workloads. Efficiency gains made to date may be outpaced by mounting data and AI demands.

Energy Consumption Is Rising

So, what does this all mean in terms of sustainability? More data equals more energy consumption by data centers. But just how much energy?

U.S. data center power demand is projected to more than double by 2035, rising to 78 gigawatts. Average rack densities are rapidly increasing, especially for AI, necessitating innovations in cooling and power infrastructure.² The energy cost to power a single server rack in a data center in the U.S. can be as high as $30,000 a year, depending on its configuration of storage and compute capabilities. On average, storage can account for 11% of the energy, or roughly $3,300 per rack. To support this, companies will need to invest in heat-removal technologies (which use power of their own) to avoid additional energy costs for cooling.

The AI Effect: Power and Density Surges

AI is the dominant driver of new data center builds and power draw. Next-gen GPUs push rack densities above 30-50kW, some heading toward 150kW or more. Traditional air cooling is giving way to hybrid and liquid systems. AI workloads’ power growth is reshaping designs and sustainability priorities.³

Cooling and Water: Next-Gen Technologies Arrive

Water is another vital resource that makes up the environmental footprint of a data center.

Cooling accounts for up to 40% of total data center energy use. In 2025, adoption of liquid cooling—direct-to-chip and immersion systems—has accelerated, with 22% of data centers now using some form of liquid cooling. Operators are also piloting new tech such as passive evaporative fiber membranes and heat reuse systems.⁴

A midsize data center uses about 130 million gallons of water per year—roughly the same amount of water as 100 acres of almond trees, three average-sized hospitals, or two 18-hole golf courses. With water availability likely to be degraded by climate change, organizations must also consider data center water usage when calculating their impact on the environment.

With water availability degraded by climate change, these advances are more critical than ever.

Legacy Data Center Technology Isn’t Helping

Although organizations are increasingly investing in sustainability initiatives, inefficient legacy data center technology is common. Their use of heat-generating, spinning disks requires tremendous amounts of electricity, water, and money to keep them running and cool. Too often, there is a singular focus on maintaining uptime, rather than doing so in a way that is environmentally responsible. Energy consumption isn’t tracked. Meanwhile, costs and energy continue to rise as data workloads increase.

As climate-related challenges grow, organizations face an increasing reality that the environment can no longer sustain the impact of storing data on outdated, inefficient technology.

Mandatory ESG disclosures and emissions reporting in Europe and Asia are accelerating the shift away from legacy data center technology. Under the EU’s revised Energy Efficiency Directive and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, operators of data centers exceeding 500kW power demand must now report detailed energy, water, and emissions metrics annually to a centralized database. Nations such as Japan, Singapore, and China are implementing parallel sustainability disclosure standards targeting enhanced energy performance and increased use of renewables by 2025.

These regulatory frameworks place new urgency on upgrading to more efficient infrastructure, incentivizing public and private organizations to replace outdated equipment with technology that meets advanced ESG and performance criteria.

Prioritizing energy intelligence for sustainable growth

Download the MIT Technology Review & Everpure
report on why energy intelligence is becoming
a critical business metric in the AI era.

Is All-flash a Solution?

The key to long-term sustainability is choosing a data storage platform that consumes less power. Modern flash storage is engineered to be lower power, lower cooling, and lower waste.

The Everpure FY25 Impact Report highlights 80% lower power and space consumption compared to competitors, driven by innovations like the 150TB DirectFlash® Modules (DFMs) and AIOps for energy and workload visibility. All-flash arrays from Everpure were built specifically to improve environmental sustainability in the data center. offers greater density, reduced power consumption, and lower cooling costs, delivering an impressive impact on customer operations and costs while supporting sustainability initiatives.

By transitioning from spinning disk to all-flash, data center footprints can shrink dramatically.

Promote Environmental Best Practices with Everpure

With products and services that measurably reduce power utilization, Everpure now

Supports hyper-dense, AI-ready storage with up to 80% less power and rack space use, verified by third-party benchmarks.
Leverages a subscription model (Evergreen//One™) that both slashes e-waste (by avoiding forklift refreshes) and supports ongoing hardware upgrades without downtime or waste.
Uses 100% renewable energy in multiple key facilities, and aims to cut absolute Scope 1 & 2 emissions 42% by 2030, validated by Science Based Targets Initiative.
Drives supplier engagement: targeting 45% of supplier spend with science-based climate targets by 2029.

Learn how Everpure modular hardware, remanufactured components, and internal sustainability dashboards for impact accounting are creating a Circular Economy improving sustainability in the data center.

Go Green with Orange

The message is clear. Sustainability is now a must in today’s business environment, and it comes with valuable benefits. Making the decision to move to data storage that is more sustainable can be part of a larger strategy to increase efficiency, add brand value, meet consumer demands, and create new opportunities.