The licensing of the DCs project is progressing normally and the strategic environmental impact study has successfully passed the stage of public consultation, Mr. Michalopoulos said.
Referring more generally to DC's environmental footprint, he said we are experiencing two huge changes in tandem, the digitization of almost everything in what we now call the 4th industrial revolution and the shift to renewable energy driven primarily by the climate crisis and other global events related to the energy crisis.
At the confluence of these two changes, we find thousands of data centers operating 24/7 to support a wide range of critical services. When we refer to the Cloud, we're actually talking about the data stored in data centers - the buildings that house banks of processing units. It is worth mentioning that the energy used by these centers represents 1% of the total electricity consumed worldwide, he added.
Microsoft - Green Practices
Microsoft's commitment, according to figures that have been announced, is that by 2025 the company will have made the transition to 100% renewable energy sources - meaning we will have green energy contracts for 100% of the energy consumed by all data centers , buildings and campuses worldwide (PPAs). This effort will be extended to all the company's functions - from transportation to packaging - with the goal of Microsoft being carbon negative by 2030. By 2050, Microsoft has committed to remove from the environment all the carbon that the company has emitted - either directly from electricity consumption or since its founding in 1975. In this direction, one billion is being invested to accelerate the global development of carbon reduction, capture and removal technologies, said the managing director of Microsoft Greece, Cyprus and Malta.
The effort for alternative energy sources is also looking at future solutions for DCs, such as that of "green" hydrogen, since it has been proven that hydrogen fuel cells can be used to produce energy without greenhouse gases, he added.
