In The Arena by TechArena - Applying a Circular Economy to the Data Center with Deborah Andrews

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

TechArena host Allyson Klein chats with Deborah Andrews, Professor of Design for Sustainability and Circularity, at London South Bank University, about her research into delivering true circularity in data center production and operation and how the future is shaping to get closer to this vision.

Welcome to the Tech Arena, featuring authentic discussions between tech's leading innovators and our host, Allison Klein. Now, let's step into the arena. Welcome to the Tech Arena. My name is Alison Klein, and we're recording from Lisbon at the OCP Summit this week. I'm really delighted to have Debra Andrews with us. She's a professor of design for sustainability at London South Bay University, and she's teaching a couple of courses here this week. Welcome to the program, Debra. Thank you very much for inviting me to talk to your listeners. Absolutely. You don't know this, Debra, but one of my passion topics is sustainable data centers, so I was very excited to see that you were coming here to Lisbon and I am fascinated by

your focus and your academic work on design for sustainability. Can you give some background on that? Yeah okay so I've been working in the field of sustainability design for a number 100 years. I did my PhD over 20 years ago but was particularly interested in vehicle design. There were rumours that electric vehicles were going to be introduced to market in a big way and also hybrid vehicles but I was particularly interested in the link. So can you tell me some background about your academic pursuits? Yeah. So when we got interested in sustainability when I was a student at Royal College Road studying industrial design, before it was called sustainable design, it was green design.

But then once I started teaching, I got more and more interested in looking at the big picture not just at um isolated areas that have been proved but how one area can impact on other areas of a product result so you might make something more energy efficient operationally energy efficient but what about all the embodied impacts how does that or how do they um your materials choice your manufacturing the manufacturing processes the durability of the product etc how do they all affect overall sustainability so um I started many years ago,

when I first went to learn to the South, I was an academic, decided to do a PhD at the same time as teaching, which was quite challenging, I love that. But I was really interested, particularly in vehicles, and at the time, there was a lot of birds, and we talked about the emergence of electric and hybrid electric vehicles

because when they were being driven, they could produce emissions or, you know, a much lower level of emissions than conventional diesel and petrol cars. But what I was really interested in was how the drivetrain itself, the different drivetrains, and all the embodied materials, manufacturing processes, impacts, how would that affect overall lifecycle facilities? And my PhD was looking at the design and lifecycle assessment of ultra-low and zero emission vehicles in the state. So that was really a big starting point.

And from there, I was invited to collaborate with research groups at the university because life cycle assessment and sustainability is very good in terms of, you know, you can explain flexibles about what you focus on. So I looked at commercial refrigeration sector, blinds and shutters from the shading industry, and just doing some work in particular with domestic textiles,

so non-stothing textiles, such a massively problematic waste stream. But I think as I got more and more involved in um sustainability in general i became much more aware that we need to think um in a very circular way it's not just enough to design products that you think are going to be sustainable because they're more energy or resource efficient well what's going to happen to all products at the end of life? Can they be disassembled? Can they be repaired? Can they be recycled?

Can they be upgraded, et cetera, et cetera? So my typos are like professor of design for sustainability and circularity. But on a more serious note, I've worked with the data centre industry for over 10 years now on various research projects. Initially, worked on a project with some colleagues at Southbank who are experts in cooling and data, well, infrastructure.

So it could be construction of buildings for any application, but in particular data centres. We have an industry partner, which was HP at the time, and they wanted to know what was the actual impact of the whole data centre and where it the hotspots? So the PhD researcher looks at the building itself or the services within the building as well as the IT equipment. So there's many aspects of what makes the data centre as possible.

That was a really successful project. IT came out as the big box for art, not only because of the materials used to manufacture, but also because of the comparatively short life of many of the cases in Sydney. And from that, working, meeting various people in the data centre in this group, and also developed other projects addressing,

in particular, the sustainability and circularity of circles. That's the most recent project. So, obviously, data centres have gotten a lot of attention over the last 10 years about the amount of energy they're consuming. But circularity is so interesting, and it's something that is a focus of OCP. What do you think about looking at data centers from the standpoint of the impact of their societal function, providing incredible value to so many different industries and so much in the way that our economy runs.

And how do you look at that in terms of sustainability awareness and what we need to do holistically in this space? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I mean, I think users, service users, let's call them customers, you know, the person in the street, be they 10 years old or 100 years old, that the people who access data via mobile phones, laptops, et cetera, and all the services associated with these digits will tend. So, you know, now in health or product monitoring or all of those. Until relatively recently, I think,

lots of people didn't make any connection between what they were doing on their phone or their laptop and what happens to the data. And it's unfortunate that a lot of the press that data centres have had has gone very bad recently.

So in Ireland, for example, where there's concentration of data centres, there have been protests about more centres being built because of the demands on the grid. And I'm not sure how much is sort of negative rubbish stirring. I could use a word, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

You know, kind of scaremongering, saying, oh, what a fraudulent centre it's built in. You won't be able to put lights on in your house because you're not going a kind of city. You know, that kind of thing. Unfortunately, I think data centre information in general has been quite negative. And, you know, people haven't sort of thought

or made the connection between I'm actually part of the problem or part of the challenge because I'm emailing and doing this, that and the other. So that's one issue. In terms of sustainability awareness, I think there are a lot of facts around that help people to inform people about how to have a street and aisle floor,

the choices that they make, or inform people about when how's that fruit and oil for your choices could be made um that then um almost um on food packaging you know you can have a kind of um chat light system for various ingredients fats carbohydrates etc so red and the green in terms of product. And there are apps that author backs it to say, I was helping at product. So basically they would help people to be informed about their choice of product. It's things like energy labelling and equipment. There are digital equipment of that.

And there are obviously, you know, big organisations like Free Peace, the Earth, etc. are able to publicise information. Whether people, whether the public link those, you know, cause and effect and the jigsaw together, I'm not entirely sure. But, yeah, I think that I don't think we can go backwards from where we are in terms of adoption of digital technology.

It's here to stay. And so our British National Health Service, for example, was quite a push for a consultation online, as one example. Or, I mean, part of my group is fantastic examples where access to digital technology has helped women

in developing countries who are the main breadwinners and it's given them access to markets, to sell products, etc. And generating income has been really transformative to them and their families.

So, you know, there are an awful lot of good things, really positive things that are associated with, well, the services that data centres enable, including awareness about sustainability. But I think we've got lots and lots of different key sorts of digital that they haven't been put together to lay the key picture yet. So I hope that the public are... Well, again, there's a big challenge, isn't there, because there's a lot of correct information and truth,

in inverted commas, in the digital sphere, but there's also an awful lot of misinformation, disinformation and rubbish as well, and the sensationalist rubbish that attracts attention. So I just hope that the public, the service users, can identify, you know, distinguish between one and the other and make the right choices. And you're giving a very pragmatic talk in Lisbon about pooling alternatives. And this comes at a time when the density of computers,

scaling and data centers, there's more and more heat that needs to be dealt with. And it's coming from that compute, can you comment on how you see cooling approaches evolving in the data center and from that sustainability and circularity lens? Are there clear winners and losers? Yeah, I mean, it's quite interesting. If you look at, so what we focus on rather than just carbon assessments, is comprehensive biocycle assessment. And one of the first pieces of work that we did with the SELVASI project, for example,

which was the big inter-agriculture project with partners across just some European countries. So some academic partners, but a lot of industry partners as well. One of the first things we did was to take some surveys and carry out a carbon assessment and a carcassive slide-side assessment and look at the results. What's the difference? And we wanted to find out, in particular,

what was the difference in impact of operational energy use and embodied in fabric materials, etc. And if you go down the carbon-only route, it looks as though operational impact is much more higher than embodied in fabric. If you look at a bigger picture, and I'm't know it's full lifeline for the festival that that ratio shifts dramatically and where you've got newer more uh operationally energy operationally efficient service then the onboarding and the operational impacts are comparable it's almost 50 50 so your product life but my concern is a little bit is that you know everybody is considering the impact of carbon let's go towards net zero which i'm serious doubts whether that's scientifically achievable let alone economically integrity but that's my thought um there's a real focus on carbon efficiency, or carbon county,

whether people do anything with the numbers that they take and direct, who knows, but there's a real focus on carbon assessment. But at best, carbon assessment is indicative both of what I think that and at worst they can be inaccurate so I'm a bit concerned about that because the carbon assessment is for the biobank

an awful lot of decision making so we did a very quick, comparatively quick piece of work, such as screening or eyesight assessment, looking at and comparing the impact of an air-cooled server with hard disk drives, an air-cooled server with SSDs, solid state,

and a liquid-filled server with solid state drives. What is the difference, not just in embodied impact, but how does energy consumption, which varies according to the server time, which has the highest and lowest impact? And one of the things we found out, again, thinking about the bigger picture, the context, was first of all, the air-cooled servers have a lower embodied impact and then the liquid

cooled and they're cooled with SSDs so SSDs have a high impact anyway so airport with hard disk drives the lower impact but they use more energy if there is a liver. So there's a kind of trade-off and it really depends how long you keep your kids in perfect mood for, because the longer you keep it, you know, annually, the

embodied impact is the biggest although the operation energy is still going to be in a ratio of operational to embodied into a body dinoflageon. That really, really exists. And the other thing is the recyclability of the components. That's really, really important to consider. Huge problem with electronics because of the ways that they're made.

And they're made in a particular way because physics, of the physics of materials, you know, demands that they are, well, constructed in a particular way to work. But also, the thing we found out was that there are lots of assumptions that say with cooling, for example, if you're running in a hot dry area or a hot wet area, the impact or the energy consumption is going to be the same, you know, for running in a cooler area, let's say, but that's not the case. It's not just because of the, well, the ambient, let's say, well, that's not the case. It's not just because of the, well, the ambient,

let's say, the environment in which there's the products, the data centres, the situation for products are operating. The actual environment has a sequence of the current impact on energy for radiation or energy for cooling. So, for instance, in hot, wet areas, we find that water may need to be cooled. It must be a load-forged. Being this, it's not.

Then there's more mechanical energy to it. Yeah. So, all of these ratios of what's best, what's worst, what's the difference between embodied and vibrational impact, they really fluctuate quite a lot according to where you're actually running your data centre. So I don't want to stand on a soapbox and say one is better than the other. I think at the moment they were not designing a circular service. So something that you design now it could be a liquid tool

and it might do the job very well but actually when you take it when it comes to the end of life and let's say eight years or ten years so you can't recycle it then you know overall impact is going to be really adverse so i think we need to not only look at cooling but look at the way in which products are designed and manufactured not just for here and now but for you know for civil future eight to ten years but that's not a straightforward answer but i don't think there is one no it makes a lot of sense you know there are so many variables that would guide a particular company's decision. Where they're located, how long are they going to keep the equipment in deployment? Is there a second life available?

Absolutely. Seems like just understanding how those things would be assessed is a huge step forward. Yeah. How do you see the industry innovating in this space i know that you work with a lot of folks in the industry what would you like to see in terms of new technologies and um customer awareness um i think one of the things we need is a really clear framework for impact assessment. And it could be environmental or social or to do with digitality materials. We need a consistent way of measuring and communicating that information.

There are a lot of tools around, be they digital or paper-based, whatever. There are various ways of assessing environmental and other insights. And you can't, a lot of companies are presenting results for assessments online, but they're opaque. Now, you're not sure really what the scope of this study is, what is the listening to. Now, whether to divide the scope one, two, and three carbon emissions, whether that will change, maybe.

But we definitely, definitely need some colour consistent framework and presentation, very clear presentation of results for end users. So whether the industry is going to be, whether it's sticks or carrots, or to get the industry to engage, I mean, I've seen to some respects, quite good for them from a business perspective not to have to be absolutely clear about what they're doing in terms of impact. You know, they can just sort of create the good things without or keep the bad things hidden, etc.

So I would really like to see the industry being a lot more focused. And then usually I want to rather just think of the situation, giving a complete picture of what they're doing, and that being seen as a sort of incentive for driving change really and improving business practice. So, say, companies who are socially and environmentally aware, they will use their tier data as a marketing tool. I mean, there is a lot of liquid anti-free washing in the marketing sphere

and that needs to stop as well so that end users have a really accurate information about what about products there are. So, in terms of innovation, I think there's lots and lots of potential for industry to innovate

but part of the problem is that they're always running on to the next thing, the next best thing, the next best thing. Let's get it up on the market. I think it was really good to stop or reflect from a bit before diving into new project development. I actually think I was correctly assessing the impact of what that project has been to be and find the best environment

and essentially the huge way of developing renewable gas. I guess a million dollar question is, are we evolving the conversation in the right ways and is the industry folks here or not?

That is a million dollar question. I certainly think that you could argue that legislation is bad thing because it can be a constraint on innovation

but you can also argue that it's a good thing because it's a framework to challenge. I would know whether we need more legislation perhaps, because rather than self-management, I feel that the sector is

like the world's last. There are some rules, but they're bent. People cherry-pick things to achieve their own ends. And so I think there are some very big, bussy conversations

in the sector. And I still find that there are people who get this availability, people who vote. And very often, you know, it's a public event and who beat um

they pull this you'll just say oh well that's interesting that's interesting but the industry will never do it oh why because that's not what they do well you know there's this sort of irony right that this industry has initiated probably more dramatic change more quickly than any other industry in the history of mankind. Yet to say, you know, well, we're not going to change because that's the way to do things. It is very ironic or very contradictory, really. I'm starting to get a little frustrated.

Just a bit I mean I think I spend quite a lot of time leading bosses to water

and it's up to them to drink if we could give them some kind of kick up the bum

to make them drink so I'm sure we've piqued some interest from our listeners

in listening to your story and your research where can folks connect with you if they want to learn more I'm sure we've piqued some interest from our listeners in listening to your story and your research. Where can folks connect with you if they want to learn more? So, as you mentioned at the beginning, I'm an academic at Lundsville South Bank University.

I can find me on LinkedIn, Deborah Andrews. You can also find me by our research, the most recent research project. Some people call it, we call it SEDACI. If you're going for a slightly Italian, the ones you might be SEDACI, it's an acronym. So it's C-E-D-A-C-I, which is the circular economy for the data centre industry.

And you can find that site online. They can give you a read-through, they'll give you what we did during the project. You can also look at and use the digital tool, the Circular Data Centre Compass that we've developed at Hartwick and Celtic. You can sign up for that. We developed a network as well of users. The project has actually come to an end officially

because the funding was in for a certain period of time, but the work that was done, we're continuing to build on that. So yeah, keep in contact with me, probably the best way is through LinkedIn or look on the University of London South Bank website as well and find me through there. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for spending time with us today, Debra. The work that you're

doing is so important. I really do hope that the industry that has actually transformed the world can transform themselves being more focused on secularity. We live in hope. We live in hope. Exactly. Keep up the great work and we'd love to have you back on the program and so forth.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for joining the Tech Arena. Subscribe and engage at our website, thetecharena.net. All content is copyright by The Tech Arena.