Nowadays, digital has a primordial place in our life and in our society. However, its exponential development may have serious consequences on our environment. Recently, the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe) published in two reports the potential environmental consequences of data centers and mining heavy metals.
Data centers: a potential unregulated environmental disaster
We don’t think much about it, but digital technology today has a real impact on our environment. This emits for example as many greenhouse gases in our atmosphere as sorting our waste into Franceor 2.5% of the country’s annual carbon footprint and 10% of its electricity consumption.
The data center sector is developing explosively in France today. Our country is in fact one of the most attractive European countries in this area and forecasts envisage an increase of +11% per year in the data center sector over the next 10 years.
However, the arrival of a data center in a territory is not without consequences. This indeed has strong impacts, capturing for example a large amount of electricity and more modestly water resources possible with the recovery of waste heat according to the Ademe report. However, the outlook envisages a very rapid increase in electricity consumption due to data centers in the medium term which could represent up to 6% of electricity consumption in France in 2050.
A major problem is that the data center sector is notpoorly regulated in France today while its environmental impact is far from negligible. These, in addition to overconsumption of electricity in a given territory, are also very energy-intensive in water due in particular to the cooling necessary to limit the overheating of the servers. Although solutions exist to limit their impacts, there is nevertheless no current obligation.
Also, the location of data centers must be more deeply thought out depending on the environmentas the pressures on the energy and water resources necessary for their operation are significant. These should also not not require the construction of buildings on natural or agricultural areas. Their implementation must in fact comply with the objectives of “Zero Net Artificialization” halving the rate of consumption of natural, agricultural and forest areas in 2031 compared to the previous decade (2011-2021) in France, then achieving the absence of net artificialization in 2050.
Heavy metal extraction: a major environmental problem that is little talked about
The manufacture of all the equipment necessary for the operation and evolution of digital technology requires heavy metal extraction. These are in fact essential in the digital sector, which notably uses gallium, manganese, germanium, copper, aluminum, lithium, yttrium and even silicon.
However, it is difficult to know what exactly contains the devices we use, the material composition data being most often incomplete due to their sensitive nature. Digital companies prefer to keep their manufacturing techniques secret in order to maintain their technological and market advantages over their main competitors.
In all cases, mining operations allowing the extraction of these metals so precious to our current technology have serious consequences on the environmentsometimes destroying entire natural areas, in addition to often significant pollution and seriously harming the biodiversity of the regions concerned.
In Allier, for example, the lithium mine project, the largest in Europe, planned for 2028, is still subject to heavy debate due to its potentially catastrophic environmental impactand this despite the fact that it has been qualified as a major national interest in the context of the energy transition.
Finally, Ademe also raises in its report the virtual absence of regulation on the recycling of different metals used in digital technology and the fact that almost all mineral extraction activities are located outside the European Union. This indeed limits the possibility of obtaining real information on the subject, as does the fact of being able to lobby for truly effective environmental standards.
The environmental impact of digital technology, a sector that has been developing exponentially for several decades now, is far from being negligible and is even much more important than we think. Yet, information, as well as regulations, standards and studies on the subject are still far too scant todaywhich is far from good news for our planet.
Sources : Futura-sciences/Ademe/EY/Novethic
