Youth Skills for a Sustainable Future: A Datacenter’s POV

On the occasion of World Youth Skills Day, we present our datacenters’ perspective on leveraging technologies and skills to build a sustainable world for the future

Hello,

I’m a datacenter and I have something interesting to talk about.

According to UNESCO, 70 per cent of young people across the world, like yourself, are worried about climate change.

As datacenters, we feel no differently.

To many, that might sound like a paradox, because we have been conventionally seen as huge power-guzzling buildings.

Whereas some people also describe us as an industry that accounts for 3 per cent of the world’s total electricity consumption.

Residential buildings often wonder why we consume more power than them, but they seldom realise we are home to thousands of servers that operate 24×7, unlike people in residential buildings that turn off the lights for a goodnight’s sleep.

If we did that, it would give nightmares to every person that uses the internet.

But today, we want to talk about World Youth Skills Day 2024, with a focus on sustainable development to build a more inclusive, and sustainable future for all.

With concerns for the planet, 7 out of 10 young people today want to pursue a ‘green’ career that leaves a positive impact on the planet, but they often face continued barriers, including career pathway ambiguity, lack of green skills education, and misinformation.

That rings a bell!

Until a decade ago, many datacenters were in the same boat as yours, as they lacked the capabilities to be more sustainable and to be called ‘green datacenters.’

But I, along with my 14 other sibling datacenters, felt confident to lead a sustainable change.

After all, we were born in the CtrlS family, which is widely acclaimed for its green efforts.

Our Founder Sridhar Pinnapureddy, also known as the ‘Green Datacenter Man of India’, always had a great vision for us, which earned us the distinction of being the pioneer of sustainability in our industry.
Interestingly, a lot of things we did and are known for, are precisely the skills that have assumed priority among the youth.

We embraced renewable energy: Our sibling in Noida, CtrlS Noida Datacenter 1, is proud to become India’s first datacenter that sources 60% of its total electricity from a solar farm – offsetting 94,640 tonnes of CO2 emissions, with an environmental impact equivalent to planting 1,89,281 trees.

According to International Energy Agency (IEA), India has the potential to create 35 million green jobs by 2047, as India has set an ambitious target of achieving Net Zero by 2070.

Datacenters, too, will play a key role in driving this growth as we are increasingly turning to renewable energy sources.

We can say this with utmost conviction, because our parent CtrlS Datacenters is committed to achieving Net Zero by 2030, and as part of efforts to achieve it, we are building a 100MW captive solar plant near Nagpur which will provide clean energy to our Mumbai campus.

Needless to say, skills pertaining to clean energy are slated to be in greater demand, even in the datacenter industry.

We turned smarter: In our world of datacenters, we have to continuously evolve with technology, as is the case in the job market today with the GenAI revolution. Our parent, CtrlS, leveraged AI, IoT and other new-age smart technologies to build over 80 innovations to improve our energy efficiency.

As per a LinkedIn survey, 92% of Indian knowledge workers across sectors are also actively integrating AI tools into their daily work.

Interestingly, the preference of AI skills among organisations is evident, with 80% of the leaders in India preferring less experienced candidates with AI skills over senior candidates lacking such skills.

It holds true for datacenters too. Today, we are not just buildings that provide the compute power to build AI applications, but we are also becoming smarter with AI integrated in our operations.

We emphasised awareness: Change begins with awareness and our parent firmly believes in it. CtrlS has spent more than 21,000 hours on employee training towards sustainability and ESG practices, because it’s only when they are truly aware, they can take focused actions and contribute to our goal of sustainable growth.

While an increasing number of organisations are taking proactive skill development efforts, as a youth with little exposure, navigating through ambiguity could be challenge.

But thanks to UNESCO’s initiatives like World Youth Skills Day and their extensive efforts, young people like yourself can gain access to useful resources.

Explore some of their interesting sessions – https://unevoc.unesco.org/wysd/World+Youth+Skills+Day

As a growing infrastructure sector, we datacenters are excited to drive sustainable development, and together with the youth, we are ever more confident.

Happy World Youth Skills Day!

Regards,
Datacenter