It would be hard to imagine modern life without data centers – they power business and support industrial activity throughout the world. But keeping all of those servers running requires a huge amount of energy. The International Energy Agency estimates that the data center industry currently uses around 1% of the world’s electricity – and that figure could reach double digits by 2030. But if data center power use is a significant issue, then data center cooling is a crucial factor, too.

Despite the growth in the number and size of facilities around the world, the electricity demand hasn’t scaled as sharply, and that’s thanks to more efficient architectures that strip out everything that’s surplus to requirements. Back in 2016, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated upgrading from small to hyperscale facilities could bring about a 25% saving in energy use, and there are now hundreds of these much larger data centers in operation.