Data is the lifeblood of organizations, but the volume and velocity of data – and in particular data storage in physical data centers – has a detrimental impact on the environment. Data storage today represents 2X the carbon impact of the global airline industry and is growing.

Fortunately, there are emerging voices that forward-thinking organizations can turn to in order to determine the best way forward in this complex landscape. Digital Sustainability Alliance, a leader in advocacy for sustainable technology practices and solutions, is focused on promoting digital sustainability and educating the market on pressing challenges, emerging solutions and best practices. Storj and Ad Signal, are founding members of the DSA and share a commitment to advancing awareness and education in support of digital sustainability.

This article examines sustainability challenges we’re currently facing due to rising AI and media demands, and how innovative technologies such as distributed cloud storage, deduplication technology, and on-demand GPUs are championing digital sustainability and helping to reduce the carbon impact of data, compute and storage.

More data + more compute = sustainability challenges.

AI is delivering stunning innovations, but demand for GPUs is resource-intensive in addition to the massive amount of data AI generates. Additionally, larger media files mean more GPUs are needed for transcoding and special effects. Currently, we’re experiencing phenomenal growth in data with 90% of the world’s data created only in the last two years. In just 2023 alone, there was a staggering 120 zetabytes of data created. And that rate will only grow and compound.

The traditional approach of building more data centers means a massive increase in carbon footprint, not to mention the cost of running physical, resource-hungry data centers. Like many industries such as media & entertainment (M&E), organizations are migrating much of their data from on-premise to cloud to meet the needs of hybrid workflows.

However, the traditional cloud is not as sustainable as many organizations initially thought.

According to studies from the NRDC and IBM, most servers operate at only 12-18% of capacity, implying that there is a huge reservoir of already manufactured and powered, but severely underutilized, storage capacity. Meanwhile, replication is a multiplying factor in the storage capacity needed due to data growth. Given the importance of data durability, most organizations store multiple copies of their data to protect against things like drive failure, accidental overwrite, natural disasters or malicious actors.

What companies can do to promote digital sustainability.

A recent independent survey commissioned by Storj found that 72.2% of M&E leaders would choose more sustainable file management and storage solutions even if they are more expensive, less performant, or less secure. While that’s a step in the right direction, there are many more tactics that businesses can leverage to  reduce carbon impact through digital innovations. Strategies include choosing technologies that:

• Utilize existing data storage, hardware space such as the distributed cloud;
• Remove media duplicates to cut down on the amount of data stored;
• Tap into existing GPUs with an on-demand approach instead of purchasing.

Ad Signal’s sustainable approach.

Let’s take a look at an award-winning sustainable technology company,  Ad Signal, as a great example of digital sustainability in action within the M&E industry.

As mentioned, data is rapidly growing and straining resources. The world currently stores 97 zettabytes of global digital data, which is expected to rise to 181 zettabytes by the end of 2025 (Statista 2021). Unfortunately, a lot of that data is duplicated; for example, the BBC stores 127 versions of the same episode of Dad's Army; this is known as "versionitis" in the industry.

Ad Signal Match deduplicates video content, regardless of format, codec or resolution. For example, using Ad Signal Match, one could potentially take that BBC’s 127 version of that television show to around 20 unique versions. In this example, there would be a 84% reduction in storage, as well as significant savings in cost and carbon emissions related to data storage.

As mentioned, many M&E companies are moving their data to the cloud. Ad Signal can help these companies to migrate only what they need. Media workflows are analyzed by Ad Signal Match which tells you – at a very granular level – what is duplicate and what is unique.

Why the distributed cloud is better for sustainability.

Storj transforms spare storage and GPUs into a massive global network, eliminating the need to add more costly data centers, while providing enterprise-level durability and high performance without data replication. As mentioned, data replication is a growing concern in terms of sustainability, cost, and use. The distributed cloud brings data durability and availability without regional replication due to the inherent global distribution architecture of the distributed network. Storj also prioritizes environmental sustainability by sourcing storage capacity and GPUs from renewable energy-powered data centers.

Sustainability doesn’t happen overnight, but with the right technology and partnerships in place, businesses can actively participate in reducing the carbon emissions of data.

‍Learn more about the Digital Sustainability Alliance and how you can make a difference.