WASHINGTON– July 10 2024 –The GDA welcomes new analysis found in the UNCTAD’s 2024 Digital Economy Report of the environmental trade-offs associated with secure cross-border data transfers to access knowledge and information across borders (on the one hand) and governmental mandates to construct local data centers in different jurisdictions (on the other). The Report notes that:
- The energy efficiency of data transmission – measured in terms of energy use per unit of data transferred – has greatly improved in the past decade. The energy needed to transmit one gigabyte (GB) of data through fixed-line networks has been observed to halve every two years, corresponding to annual efficiency gains of 30 per cent; while mobile-access network energy efficiency has improved by 10–30 per cent annually. Each successive generation of mobile network uses less energy to transmit data than the previous generation.4 For example, in 2015, 4G networks typically used around one fiftieth of the energy5 of 2G networks to transfer the same amount of data.
- Most data flow through submarine cables, whose numbers grew from 428 in 2017 to 574 active and planned cables in early 2021.
- Satellites also play a growing role in Internet traffic and data transfers, particularly for remote locations. As of April 2023, there were 7,560 operating satellites in space, a sharp increase by more than 2,000 units compared to the same period in 2022 (5,465 units).
- Between January 2021 and January 2024, the number of co-location data centres increased from 4,714 to 5,522. The growth rate of installations was higher in developing economies (22 per cent) than in developed economies (16 per cent) in the same period.
The Report also cautioned that “data centres require huge computing capacity. While the relationship between data centres and the environment is mostly seen in terms of energy and water use, they also have a major impact on material demand through their use of computers and servers.”
Given the environmental costs associated with restrictions on the ability to transfer data across borders and with mandates to build redundant and duplicative data centers in many jurisdictions, UNCTAD advises “policymakers around the world need to assess the costs and benefits involved in deciding the physical location of data, taking into account the specificities of a country and their own development strategy needs.”