The impact of data centres on the environment and the climate is hard to measure. The Swiss Datacenter Efficiency Association has recently won international recognition for a tool that assesses the facilities’ footprints. Any activity that uses the internet – working from home with a computer, paying for dinner with a credit card, or generating an image with artificial intelligence – relies on data centres. These buildings full of servers host the IT infrastructure needed to process and transmit digital data. The number of data centres is increasing in Switzerland and around the world. As a result, energy consumption and CO₂ emissions are growing as well. Data centres use around 7% of Switzerland’s electricity, and this could more than double by 2030. Most of the electricity powering the facilities often comes from fossil fuels, and large amounts of water are required to cool the IT equipment. >> How does a data centre work? Despite sustainability commitments across the tech sector …