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Story summary
- Data centres currently use about 1.5% of electricity, and energy use could double by 2030, emitting 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent.
- The rise of generative AI has intensified demand for high-performance computing, increasing energy consumption.
- Most data stored is cold data, which requires energy for retrieval and cooling.
- Hard disk drives remain common, but magnetic tape is growing for storage efficiency, though it still requires energy for temperature control.
