After a hiatus of several years, climate change policy is taking off in the US, with the Biden-Harris Administration using the Inflation Reduction Act and the Energy Earthshot to accelerate the clean energy economy.
But data center energy policy goes back a lot further than that. Stephen Harper, Intel's Global Director, Environment and Energy Policy, was there 20 years ago when data centers first came onto the climate change radar, and he's been tracking progress since then.
As well as their own emissions "footprint", data centers have a positive impact on emissions elsewhere, known as the environmental "handprint"
But how do we measure that handprint, and set it against the negative impact of infrastructure.
And coming after this backstory, just what impact of these Biden-Harris initiatives have?
DCD speaks to Stephen about the likely impact of historic climate legislation for the digital infrastructure sector.
DCD Zero Downtime: The Bi-Weekly Data Center Show