In 2010, in the USA, datacentre electricity use was 2% of the national total ...

Julian Bond - 2012-09-23 11:34:35+0000 - Updated: 2012-09-23 11:34:35+0000

In 2010, in the USA, datacentre electricity use was 2% of the national total electricity use. Worldwide, datacentres use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants. This is probably on a rapid exponential growth rate (anyone know?) so while it's astonishing to see so much energy being used to power the computronium, it's also a huge opportunity for energy savings.

Data Centers Waste Vast Amounts of Energy, Belying Industry Image

Kevin Russell - 2012-09-23 13:21:46+0000

And Datacenters will only grow in number. +Kirk Sorensen, besides electric vehicles and all other mind of future billions of gadgets, have you seen a "competent" and "unbiased" estimation of global, continental, and national sets of electrical demand forecasts? I have been looking for this off and on for 6 yrs. I've seen a few things 'but still haven't found what I'm looking for'.

Julian Bond - 2012-09-24 07:00:12+0000

Some contrasting views.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/23/3377868/cloud-internet-infrastructure-waste-energy-new-york-times
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2012/09/23/why-the-new-york-times-story-power-pollution-and-the-internet-is-a-sloppy-failure/

One stat, between 2005 and 2010, datacentre energy usage increased by 56 percent worldwide and 36 percent in the US. This suggests that efficiency is improving quite quickly since all other measures are probably increasing considerably faster.