Datacentre demand 'a self-fulfilling cycle': National Grid CIO Sarah Milton-Hunt
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IT is both victim and culprit in the pending energy crisis.
Suppliers have warned of the strain datacentres place on energy grids for years. The problem is only growing worse with the rise of gen-AI and new hyperscale facilities that suck megawatts like milkshake.
The challenge is so severe that developers are being banned from building new facilities in built-up areas like London, and Microsoft is looking to an alternative energy source - nuclear - to power AI's demands.
In this turbulent market firms like the UK's National Grid, which owns and operates the UK's gas and electricity transmission networks, are forced to look at new solutions.
"Datacentres are one of the largest demands on us, particularly in growth," says CIO Sarah Milton-Hunt.
"It's very difficult, on a personal basis, to operate in an environment where we're trying to digitise more and more, knowing that that increases the demand for computing, which increases the demand for electricity in its own self-fulfilling cycle."
For its own IT, National Grid works closely with partners like Microsoft, with a strong track record on emissions, power consumption and other sustainability metrics, but "a sustainable mindset in development and design" is just as important.
"If we are developing things that are required 24/7, how are we exploiting capabilities like cloud, containerisation, stand up, tear down, and only utilising what we need? It's examples of how you do sustainability in design. I think we have a responsibility to do that, and it does fit within our objectives and our considerations as we design our digital capabilities."
In the same way that you would design for resilience, you should design for sustainability
The issue of datacentre power consumption may not be as pressing for IT leaders outside the energy sector, but they can and should still do their part in making systems more efficient.
"It's primarily about having [power consumption] in the forefront of your mind as you design things. In the same way that you would design for resilience, you should design for sustainability; that's the only way to do it."
Other IT leaders have shared this sentiment in the past, rightly pointing out that optimised code is greener code.
"There's [a question about] how you build new stuff that's more sustainable, and how you review your legacy environment and your heritage environment to actually make some subsequent decisions - and whether you take sustainability debt in the same concept as technical debt."
It's clear that the exponential growth in datacentre demand cannot continue; and without putting strict limits on the public's usage, it falls to IT teams to step up to the challenge.
It won't all be on IT's shoulders, though - a recent paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that regulation also plays a part.
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