The energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatened winter power blackouts across Europe. Because of this, Europe data centers are among the world’s biggest data centers. Western Europe Data Center is facing a lot many problems regarding energy resources. And this is all because they need a complete plan or strategy for efficiently using or adopting the energy resources.

Western Europe Data Center Gas Supplies

Western Europe, or WEC, comprises the European Union (EU) countries, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. This region’s data centers rely on natural gas supplies to fuel their operations. As a result, gas supply disruptions can seriously impact the availability of IT services in these regions.

For this purpose, there must be strategic planning regarding what they can do to solve the problem of this energy misuse and intake of Energy sources.

Data centers are trying to accept the technologies and techniques to improve their supplies. This would help them to increase the data center’s efficiency in working and performing all its work at the best of its level.

War Effects on Europe Energy sources

Western Europe has worked on being the best in the world but is still facing an energy crisis. And when we look at the western Europe data center, it’s found that they are struggling for gas supplies. According to Gary Aitkenhead – Equinix’s senior vice president of Europe.

Increase in Gas Supplies Prices

This instant planning allowed all the western European companies to provide an energy-intensive based critical infrastructure. These include all the telecoms networks and data centers for investigating the best and workable immediate—strategies for avoiding service interruptions.

Due to the War in Ukraine, there was an unbelievable increase in energy prices in Europe. And this is because the EU and UK both seek to wean themselves off the supplies of both Russian gas and Moscow chokes supply.

The Calculated Values

It calculates that around about 200 – 250 terawatt-hours of electrical energy are used by data centers all around the world per year. And this estimated value, according to the international energy agency, can be equal to 1% of the total demanded electricity energy. But if we look in-depth, it discovers that Western Europe Data Center mostly have diesel backup generators to ensure their operations during the period when there is an energy shortage.

Other than this, Europe data center companies use electrical energy directly through power purchase agreements. They know they can face electricity shortage anytime, so they have a backup. The backup requires because the Western Europe Data Center has a lot of secure information. So they can’t take risks at any cost.

The Biggest Real Estate Investment

Equinix and Digital Realty do the biggest real estate investment trusts in Europe. When we see the number of data center of these both, then these are as follow:

  • 89 data centers of Equinix are present in 29 cities across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
  • More than 110 data centers of Digital Realty are present across 13 European countries, including the UK, France, and Germany.

A couple of weeks ago, Dutch news outlet NOS reported a shortage of natural gas in the Netherlands, which could affect the country’s ability to keep its data centers running. According to NOS, there is a dispute between Russia and Ukraine over access to Russian gas supplies; this disagreement has led to a reduction in export volumes from Russia to Western Europe.

The impact of the shortage on Western European data centers has already been felt by several companies, including Apple and Amazon. The two U.S.-based giants have recently chosen alternative locations for their European data centers—the Netherlands is losing Apple due to this issue, while Amazon is opening a new cloud computing facility in Frankfurt, Germany.

Read more: EU Green Data Centre Regulation Will Affect Your Business

The demand for gas supplies in winters

Gas demand peaks during the winter, but there needs to be more gas supply in western Europe. Due to the war, gas supplies became limited, and everything became unpredictable for the government.

The gas problem in Europe is due to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Western Europe Data Center imported gas from Russia, but this import was disrupted during the war. Not only this, but the prices also increase everywhere. This war wasn’t only a war but also had horrible impacts after it. These include,

  • Gas supplies get expensive
  • Rivers were drained because of the climate change
  • Due to the depleted rivers, Europe’s nuclear plants get offline
  • The misunderstanding creates among European policymakers.
  • The continent’s reflection was found while seeing the power prices in both Germany and France.

Behind this situation are the extreme weather changes that have affected the region over the past years. There has been a surge in demand for gas as more people turn to it as an alternative heat source during cold winters. Meanwhile, supply has also dropped due to low temperatures and associated problems with transportation.

The Russian monopoly supplier Gazprom, which provides 30% of Europe’s natural gas, has warned about possible disruptions to its shipments to Europe this winter. The company has constantly struggled with freezing temperatures and lack of snow which make it impossible for trucks to reach some remote parts of Siberia where most of the production facilities are located. This is why more gas pipelines must be built from Russia to Western Europe to meet growing demand.

Conclusion

The European data centers need help finding enough gas to keep the data center running. The solution is relocating the Europe data center to Indonesia by using a cheap energy source. The solution can help both parties, the Indonesian government and the European data center, to solve the problem. In Indonesia, a lot of gas supply can be used in European data centers.

Before you sign a deal to host with a provider, ensure they’re taking steps to minimize the environmental impact of their electric usage and other resources. Start by looking for green certification, like LEED or ISO 14001. Many providers will claim to have an eco-friendly facility, but only those certified can prove it, so these certifications should be your first stop in researching different providers.

If your provider has a green data center certification, read about their specific practices. The standards for each one are different, and some providers may have higher standards than others, even if both are green certified.

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