Digital Economy Weekly - October 27, 2024
IDCA - International Data Center Authority
The Authority that Enables Industry 5.0, Empowering Digital Transformation, Digital Economy, and Digital Infrastructure.
Story of the Week
Sustainability is the Elephant in the Room
Most discussions about sustainability within the digital infrastructure industry focus on renewable energy and the price of it. Prices per kilowatt hour rule the day eternally, even as the operators of data centers and related business are increasingly concerned with using solar, wind, hydro, and other forms of renewable energy to feed their massive beasts.
But that single-focus approach to sustainability is very much like the blind men examining and elephant. We have the elephant by the tail and think it looks like a rope. But there is a heck of a lot more elephant than that in the room.
Bruce Taylor added some vision to this topic during a webinar this past week, entitled “The Sustainability Realm.” Bruce is the Senior Fellow for Sustainability at The Digital Economist – a view of his work on creating a Seven-Layer Model for Sustainability is provided in one of the Links of the Week below.
Human beings have now dumped more than 1.5 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The parts-per-million of CO2 in the atmosphere exceeded the consensus tipping point a few decades ago.
The United States has emitted 25 percent of these emissions cumulatively and China 13 percent – year-to-year, China now produces 26 percent of the world's emissions and the US 13 percent. Every country emits something, and the US is actually well above the world as a whole in its efficiency in delivering value from its economy relative to the emissions it creates, while China is well below the world average in this respect.
But, getting away from all the statistics and fun facts, Bruce points out there should be a strong bias for action, by governments, industrial enterprises, as well as all other businesses and organizations. He discussed building materials, incremental and quantum improvements through operational and developmental practices, and the need to migrate toward a “circular economy” that reuses rather than simply extracts, and “doughnut economies” that consider planetary limits on the outside of the doughnut and human needs as we move toward its center.
Very few adults in this conversation today will be around in the year 2100, but our children and grandchildren will. The Earth will continue to orbit as it does today, the sun will continue to fuse hydrogen, and the essentially timeless nature of the universe will rock on. That is, even as we can read alarming opinions about going past points of no return, how this and that must be done by 2050 and this and that must be done by 2100, the reality is that year is coming in any case.
So, “don't give up” is a highly abstracted way of what Bruce outlines, describes, and urges us to pursue. In fact, he makes the case that there is considerable economic value in doing so. He can cite a report from McKinsey, an organization that is hardly anti-capitalist, saying an investment on the order of $40 trillion will be needed as soon as 2030 to get us on a proper course. This is actually only about 6 to 7 percent of the global economy – consider it an investment, and a relatively small one to put at risk. The elephant is trumpeting for attention.
Links of the Week
“TSMC Needs Better Rivals”
A think piece from Bloomberg this week noted that Taiwan's TSMC has commanded more fab production than the rest of the world combined, and is the sole provider of Apple's and Nvidia's “most-prized” chips. In an effort to “find better better rivals,” the company released a strategy called Foundry 2.0 to extend its business from fabrication to design, packaging, and marketing, also working to obviate concerns about being perceived as a monopoly. Read here.
Seven-Layer Model for Sustainability
Bruce Taylor outlined a seven-layer model for sustainability, speaking as the sole guest of the IDCA webinar, “The Sustainability Realm.” Bruce outlined three “defensive stack layers” and four “offensive stack layers:
Small-Language Models Touted for Specialized AI
With large-language models (LLMs) dominating headlines for the past couple of years, a new trend toward small-language models is emerging for use in specialized, targeted applications. Warning about the potential “overkill” of LLMs for many types of AI applications, some developers cite enhanced accuracy, better performance, and even addressing concerns about data privacy with smaller models. Read here.
SAP Addresses Scope 3 Emissions as COP29 Approaches
With the UN's COP29 meeting rapidly approaching to convene in Baku, Azerbaijan, a new data sharing platform developed by European enterprise software giant SAP is in the news for its potential to address Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions by standardizing data collection and sharing. Scope 3 emissions are those produced across a company's supply chain, and thus entail indirect emissions emanating from a company's suppliers and partners. They comprise the largest component of emissions from any particular company's operational footprint. Read here.
IEA Sees A Quadrupling of Solar Energy by 2030
A new International Energy Agency (IEA) report projects a quadrupling of solar energy in the world by 2030. This would approach steady-state terawatt-level consumption by that time, then see solar energy first exceed coal-produced electricity by 2033, then reach several terawatts by 2050, as coal consumption continues a long decline.
The world's electricity footprint currently runs along at about 3TW steady-state. Solar's contribution percentage continues to run in the single digits. Read here.
Someone Plans “Transformative” Data Center Cluster in Washington State
Advance Phase LLC is the ostensible developer of a planned $4.8 billion investment in a cluster of 16 data centers in the Walla Walla area of southeast Washington state. The local port authority is considering selling 500 acres for $32 million to set the groundwork for the project.
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AWS already has substantial data center footprint in the area, and it seem apparent that either Microsoft or Google are lurking behind the shell company to build out this new hub, which is being described as “transformative.” Read here.
AI By Any Other Name
The ongoing AI wave has matured quickly enough to merit its own analysis of branding, specifically the names companies are choosing for their latest and greatest. A Bloomberg inquiry cites allusions to Greek mythology and astrology (eg Gemini and Titan), as well as animals (eg Llama).
Discussing all this with a Brooklyn-based branding agency, the inquiry has uncovered “superhero energy,” along with a cute-animal strategy meant to make AI sound “adorable.” Who wouldn't want to play with an Alpaca, after all? Read here.
Digital Commons Governance Summit Approaching
The entire magilla of sustainability and its “stewardship of digital commons” is under purview on November 7 at the Digital Commons Governance Summit. The event is co-sponsored by The Digital Economist and will be held on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, MA.
Underlying the discussion is an initiative called The Ostrom Project, described as “a global movement toward the stewardship of digital commons. This project is aimed at redefining the landscape of digital governance, sustainability, and community-driven development, fostering resilient, equitable, and thriving digital commons.” The project has brought together a core of scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts dedicated to exploring and expanding the boundaries of digital commons, according to summit organizers. Read here.
Brazil Can Push Decarbonization to World Leadership Levels
As the chief steward of the Amazon basin, Brazil will always face intense scrutiny of how well it is preserving this massive and fragile area. The Amazon is by far the world's largest river system, and Brazil is one of the world’s top ten GHG emitters. The good news is, according to a recent McKinsey study, “its existing endowments can support other regions to decarbonize more cheaply and efficiently.”
The report describes $100 billion added GDP from decarbonizing programs, in a G20 nation that has already made very large strides in developing a sustainable electricity grid. Read here.
Heard in the Industry
“We’re fabbing at TSMC because it’s the world’s best. And it’s the world’s best not by a small margin, it’s the world’s best by an incredible margin,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, speaking at a Goldman Sachs event in September.
Heard in the Aisle
“The data center density in Northern Virginia,” currently consuming more than 3.5GW of steady-state consumption, “has created a large heat dome that aggravates concerns about the electricity supply, and adds another dimension to sustainability concerns. This will increasingly be a problem throughout the world.” – Bruce Taylor, speaking on behalf of The Digital Economist. Watch here.
Country Snapshot: Trinidad and Tobago
The Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago has a multi-ethnic population of 1.5 million people and has worked hard to improve its economy through not only tourism but financial services and technology. The nation's leaders have ambitions for it to emerge as a regional Americas hub on the order of Panama. But it's tough going.
Trinidad and Tobago ranks 138th among the nations of the world last among the 17 “Edge” economies we survey in the IDCA Digital Readiness Index. An Edge economy is one that has been developing rapidly and is on the “edge” of becoming fully developed. This designation is determined solely by per-person income, so thus comes with the proviso that these nations may have vast disparities in income distribution and quality of life. This is true for Trinidad and Tobago.
The country's ranking is brought down by an almost complete lack of sustainable energy, and an inefficiency in limiting CO2 relative to its economy that is among the lowest in the world. The US for example is five times more efficient than Trinidad and Tobago, whose emissions are comparable to that of an inefficient oil kingdom. The nation's technology development is improving, but relative to its high per-person income is lagging. Its social and governance scores are at the (mediocre) world average.
So there is plenty of upside here. The nation's government is part of Caribcom, an EU-type effort to create a single market. It also works to strengthen ties with continental neighbor Guyana, a small country with fewer than a million people but relatively extensive oil and mineral resources.
A combined Trinidad/Tobago/Guyana nation would be a neat idea for a novel, in which two English-speaking nations with very similar diversity (including a Hindu Indian culture representing the largest group of people in each) surrounded by Latin America could build off one another to create a small, yet powerful resource-rich nation that could hypothetically develop as a data center and AI hub.
Such a thing won't happen soon in the real world, but it is clear the ongoing AI-driven quest for powerful new chips and facilities is reaching all corners of the world. We have no knowledge of any sorts of negotiations, but it seems likely Trinidad and Tobago's leaders are not unaware of such discussions, and are certainly pushing to improve their country economically.
Inside IDCA
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Lead Brand Ambassador/Head of Resume Screening/Business Development Representative at BRUNS-PAK Data Center Solutions
2moThis article is insightful identifying some real objectives and goals to ensure our ability to improve upon our planet's future. The use of AI in focusing on the various countries meeting the goals of reducing the use of fossil fuels is a necessity. We need to find an alternate energy source and the world needs to address the future of our planet