As energy supply concerns grow amid the war between the United States, Israel and Iran, calls are mounting to reduce energy waste in the workplace. Rather than indiscriminately expanding the use of power-hungry artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, selectively deploying them where needed and cleaning up unnecessarily accumulated data alone could significantly cut power waste.
According to Veritas, an enterprise data management company, so-called "dark data" — duplicated or virtually unused information — accounts for one-third of all corporate data, the company said on the 6th. Even accounting for data directly or indirectly needed for operations, only 15% of corporate data is actively utilized, the survey found. Veritas analyzed that 53% of total data management energy is consumed managing unclassified and neglected dark data within enterprises. "As companies failed to properly prepare for the explosion of data in the AI era, they adopted a strategy of hoarding data unconditionally," Veritas said. "This is driving not only excessive storage costs but also energy waste and environmental burden from data center expansion."
The problem is not limited to corporations. According to Statista, a global data services firm, an average of 361.6 billion emails were sent worldwide per day in 2024. The figure is projected to rise to 392.5 billion this year and 408.2 billion next year. The issue is that a significant portion of these emails remain undeleted on servers for extended periods, causing continuous power consumption. Given analyses suggesting that a single email generates approximately 4 grams of carbon emissions, experts advise a "digital diet" — such as emptying promotional email inboxes.
