The amount of energy required to run a data centre rose by 13 per cent between 2006 and 2007, and is expected to continue growing, according to new research by IDC.

The analyst firm's latest report estimates that data centre power consumption levels in western Europe exceeded 40TWh (terawatt hours) in 2007 and are expected to grow to more than 42TWh in 2008.

The rise is mainly due to the spread of volume servers, which now cover around 90 per cent of the installed base, as well as growth in the average amount of energy that servers consume, according to Giorgio Nebuloni, analyst for European systems and infrastructure solutions at IDC.

"Even though the manufacturers are working on energy efficient servers, this is not enough. The gains they make cannot balance this kind of growth [in energy consumption]," he said.

"Also, in many cases, energy bills are not paid by the IT department so IT does not care."

• IDC report: Energy Footprint of the European Server Infrastructure 2006-2007