The data centers of large companies they are real sinks of electricity consumption, not only due to the consumption of the servers, but also due to the high consumption of the necessary cooling so that the rooms where the servers are located are kept at an adequate temperature so that they can work correctly.
Microsoft, like Apple and Google have a large number of data centers spread over many countries. Apple and Google get most of the energy needed to maintain these renewable energy data centers, especially solar energy. Apple has been investing in this type of power source for many years and it is currently also used in the assembly process of the company's different mobile devices.
Microsoft wants to join the bandwagon of renewable energy in its data centers and has just announced that in 2018, at least 50% of all your servers will use renewable energy, either from the sun or from the water. Brad Smith, President of Microsoft has published the steps that the company will follow in the coming years to be able to source from renewable sources.
Across the technology industry, we have to recognize that data centers will be ranked, by the middle of the next decade, among the world's largest consumers of electrical energy. We need to keep working steadily to build and operate greener data centers that will benefit the world.
For Microsoft, this means moving beyond data centers that no longer use coal as a power source; data centers have to use energy from wind, solar, and hydro over time. Today approximately 44% of the electricity used by our data centers comes from our sources. Our goal is to go 50% by the end of 2018 and 60% by the beginning of the next decade and continue to improve from there.