elected environmentalists denounce the energy consumption of the data storage center
Elected officials denounce a center that produces heat and requires an energy-intensive cooling system to operate.
It is a technological feat that environmentalists denounce. If the 45,000 km long cable recently delivered to the seaport of Marseille should help revolutionize connectivity in Africa, elected environmentalists denounce the consumption of the “data center”, the data storage center to which it is connected.
“To store this data, you need energy. And above all, it generated heat”, explains David Cormand, MEP EELV, at the microphone of BFM Marseille Provence. “It’s like your computer at home, or your TV: you put your hand underneath or behind it, you see that it has generated heat.”
Problem: to regulate this heat, the data center must therefore be cooled. “So there is significant energy consumption behind data centers,” continues David Cormand.
A tax on data flows?
Beyond the environmental and energy question posed by this gigantic data center, ecologists denounce the very model of the data center.
“The economic model behind it, including the political model, the control of our personal data, is something that you have to see the negative sides of.”
In 2021, Sébastien Barles, deputy mayor of Marseille, had already removed the question of a tax on flows linked to data centers.
“One day we should talk about the products generated by the data centers installed in the Grand Port Maritime,” he told our colleagues from Provenceemphasizing the “pressure” that the data center represents in terms of energy consumption.
But the establishment of such a tax is not only a municipal decision. It also concerns telecoms and requires authorization from the State. So far, neither has spoken on the matter.
The longest maritime cable in the world
Connected two weeks ago to the port of Marseille, the maritime cable – which is the longest in the world – connected to the data center should make it possible to improve connectivity in Africa by depending on 33 countries by 2024, i.e. three billion people on three different continents.
Developed by Interxion, this is the 16th submarine cable leaving the port of Marseille.
If the cost of the digital cable investment has not been revealed, the city of Marseille hopes that it will allow it to enter the top 5 digital structures (“hubs”) worldwide.