Why data has a durability problem

This article is part of a special issue of VB. Read the full series here: Smart Sustainability.

Each year in the United States, an estimated 5,130 million metric tons of energy-related carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. In technology companies alone, the explosion of data has not helped matters, as innovation in the sector continues to grow rapidly.

Some experts like Sanjay Podder, Managing Director and Global Head of Sustainability Technology Innovation at Accenture, say that if left unchecked, exponential growth in data could lead to increased demand for energy and carbon emissions, thwarting progress on climate change.

The last two years have only made the problem worse. In the wake of COVID-19, cloud adoption, deployment of AI, and as a result, data have all increased exponentially as demand for accelerated digital transformation has grown.

The accelerated adoption of these technologies may have helped companies adapt, keep business afloat, allow employees to keep their jobs during volatile times, and pave the way for the future innovation, but what did it do to the environment?

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Data collection and storage, cloud computing and AI all contribute significantly to carbon emissions, but how much and what can companies do to mitigate the impacts while advancing innovation? And if data is powering these innovations, what is being done well and what could companies improve on in terms of data sustainability?

“We hope people will move from focusing on data at rest to data in motion,” said Phil Tee, CEO of Moogsoft, an AI-based observability company. "There's a kind of culture that's grown around the idea of ​​not throwing anything away and keeping every bit of data you've ever received. The problem is when that turns into an approach to data that you don't need to keep. Then what happens is that the data is instead of just being discarded or kept minimally, it's kept maximally. So in other words , there's kind of a knee-jerk reaction that because we're not throwing away anything else, we shouldn't throw this away, even if it's data that has purely real-time meaning - like literally six milliseconds - and after having received this data, you no longer need it. I think it's ultimately whether you like the most hanging fruits of this tree."

Technological innovations are not going to slow down and, in fact, they are on the rise. A report from Activate Consulting claims that data and automation in the enterprise are driving the explosion. And while some of these innovations will likely be aimed...