From Google to Facebook, big data is driving green energy shift

A guest is seen through a data center model during 4th annual American Digital Latin American Congress of Business and Technology in Santiago, Chile, September 5, 2018. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Dozens of wind turbines each standing 260 feet tall spin in the breeze on the plains of Oklahoma, feeding electricity for a Google datacentre about 180 miles away. 

Worldwide, datacentres like the Mayes County site outside Tulsa handle almost 32 quintillion bytes of information each day, according to Cisco Global Cloud Index. That’s the equivalent of streaming 32 billion hours of Netflix, and it makes big tech companies some of the fastest growing energy consumers.