Online Session  /  October 13, 2026, 4:00-4:45 CET

Data centers form the backbone of modern societies

Given the rapid shift towards AI-driven economic and lifestyle models, this critical infrastructure is becoming increasingly important. The construction, operation, and maintenance of modern data centers present not only an economical challenge, but have a significant impact on energy and resource consumption.

The Environmental and Reliability Engineering Department at Fraunhofer IZM investigates the environmental impact of data centers and the underlying information and communication technology in order to identify critical trends and develop technical strategies for system optimization.

 

Life Cycle Assessments

In this context, life cycle assessment (LCA) methods are applied not only to quantify the overall impact but, in particular, to analyze the causal technical and operational drivers of the environmental impact.

 

In this expert session, we examine current trends regarding the total energy and resource consumption of data centers.

We briefly outline our methods for quantifying and analyzing these trends. This seminar covers the following topics:

  • AI boom – economic perspective and forecasts
  • Environmental concerns – energy, water and raw materials consumption of data centers
  • Lifecycle assessment methodology and an exemplary assessment of a high performance server system
  • Some considerations related to eco-efficiency of the hardware system and its manufacturing
  • Some considerations related to eco-efficiency of the hardware utilization and data center operation 

 

Join us for our session

With this expert session, we invite you to take a closer look at the AI ​​boom. Through our analyses, we aim to provide you with a broader understanding of this techno-economic and ecological development.