Data Centers: between hypergrowth and environmental responsibility
Reading time: 6 min
Data Centers have become the beating heart of the digital transformation. However, their strong, extremely rapid growth poses a number of performance, sustainability and security challenges. These challenges must be addressed not only in operation but from the design phase of these unconventional buildings.
The explosion in data volumes, the rise of cloud computing and the internet of things, now artificial intelligence and sovereignty, have massively increased the need for digital infrastructure. At the heart of this movement are data centers – digital cathedrals in which the entire world’s information is stored and processed.
Cathedrals they may be, but they are springing up like mushrooms! According to Emergen Research, the value of the data center market, estimated to be 386.5 billion dollars in 2024, is expected to reach 1,004.9 billion dollars by 2034, with an annual growth rate of 11.2%.
What is behind this boom? “Businesses are looking for flexible and scalable computing environments capable of adapting to their business needs,” explains Célia Martins Cerdeira, Global Expertise Manager Cloud & Datacenter Infrastructure at Axians. “Many are opting for private or hybrid cloud solutions and are seeking providers able to securely host their infrastructure. This evolution is stimulating construction of increasingly vast data centers in close proximity to users to ensure high performance and high availability.”
Facing significant costs and technical complexity, many organizations are adopting “as-a-Service” models. The expert adds: “This gives them enhanced budgetary control and provides the expertise they need to manage increasingly complex hybrid and multicloud environments. Outsourcing not only offers hosting capabilities, but also consulting and managed services.”
European regulatory constraints (NIS2 and DORA directives) and digital sovereignty concerns are strengthening the positions of local players, as businesses seek to reduce their dependence on providers subject to the U.S. Cloud Act.
From storage to intensive processing
In this context, artificial intelligence is a major catalyst. The massive computing capacities and high-performance infrastructure required by AI workloads are profoundly transforming the design and management of data centers. “Sites are evolving from a simple hosting model toward being more powerful and more energy-intensive,” observes Marc Fischer, Business Unit Manager at Cegelec Data Center Île-de-France (VINCI Energies Building Solutions).
“Sustainability and cost optimization are currently the top two issues”
In order to bring computing power closer to users, the massive cloud computing providers, or hyperscalers – Microsoft, Amazon and Google – are increasingtheir local installations even as on-premises data centers proliferate.
Environmental and energy issues
The extremely rapid expansion of data centers pose numerous questions. “Sustainability and cost optimization are currently the top two issues,” says Célia Martins Cerdeira.
Operating at approximately 50% capacity, a 15 MW data centre – comparable to a small hyperscaler – can consume as much power as a European town with a population of 30,000. Construction of the building, fabrication of the servers, cooling (which is both energy and water-intensive), and equipment end-of-life all contribute to a large overall environmental footprint.
“It’s essential to install this infrastructure where energy is less carbon-intensive in order to reduce the sector’s carbon footprint,” says Marc Fischer. “A data center in France is markedly more sustainable thanks to the low-carbon energy mix, emitting far less CO₂ than an equivalent facility in Germany or the United States.”
New approaches are emerging, such as GreenOps, which combines the optimization of cloud-related and infrastructure costs (FinOps) with environmental performance. “Every IT operation has a financial and environmental cost,” says Célia Martins Cerdeira. “GreenOps is about precisely managing the use of IT resources to reduce the ecological footprint and optimize financial costs, by maximising energy efficiency.”
Sustainability at the core of VINCI Energies strategy
The data center boom requires a rethink of the design and operation of this vital infrastructure. In this strategic market, VINCI Energies covers the entire value chain. The VINCI Energies Building Solutions brand is involved in design and construction, from electrical engineering and climate control to security and technical management systems. Axians manages the digital layer (network, servers, cloud, cybersecurity, data analytics), from strategic consulting through to operational management. Axians also has several centers of expertise, in different countries, where its specialists remotely manage infrastructure located all over the world.
VINCI Energies has made sustainability the core of its strategy, making use of several levers: low-carbon materials, green fuels, low-climate-impact refrigerant fluids, waste heat recovery for urban heating, and energy-efficient, recyclable equipment.
“To decarbonise data centers and integrate them more effectively into their environments by maximising positive externalities”
“The objective is clear: to decarbonise data centers and integrate them more effectively into their environments by maximising positive externalities,” says Marc Fischer. “Recovering waste heat from GPUs [graphics processing units] is a major focus. Recycling waste heat is really the only way to further reduce the carbon footprint of data center industry, even if this parameter isn’t taken into account for the calculation of the PUE [Power Usage Effectiveness].”
Cybersecurity remains inextricably linked to performance. VINCI Energies Building Solutions is working on security and technical management systems, while Axians is rolling out zero-trust, SASE and SOC‑as‑a‑Service solutions. “We also collaborate with Actemium on IT/OT convergence to protect industrial systems that are essential for production (SCADA, MES, ERP),” adds Célia Martins Cerdeira.
03/16/2026
