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Data Center
Educational Article

Top Five Data Center Trends for 2025

By Gordon Johnson, Senior CFD Manager

As artificial intelligence reshapes the data center landscape in 2025, sustainability and cooling innovations take center stage. Gordon, our Senior CFD Manager at SubZero Engineering, breaks down the five critical trends that will define the data center industry this year. From hybrid cooling solutions for AI workloads to global expansion challenges, these insights reveal how data centers must adapt to meet growing demands while navigating stricter environmental regulations.

1. Sustainability Trends Continue to Shape the Landscape

Looking ahead to 2025, data centers will need to continue getting more sustainable and energy efficient, especially with the expected growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). This trend will not be a temporary either, with many experts predicting data center growth to continue to at least 2032. The race to get green and sustainable is urgent, with data centers already stretching the limits of today’s power grid, with the predicted growth of AI requiring even more power when power availability is quickly becoming a source of local and global tensions. 

2. Hybrid Cooling Infrastructure for AI and HPC

With the emergence of AI and HPC comes the challenge to cool high-density workloads. While traditional workload densities will continue to make up the majority of ITE in data centers for the foreseeable future, those deploying AI and HPC workloads will require some form of specialized cooling like liquid cooling. With the accelerated demand for single-phase liquid DTC (cold plate Direct-to-Chip cooling) needed to cool the latest GPUs (Graphic Processor Units), if a data center is not at least thinking of preparing for liquid cooling they’ll be at a disadvantage moving forward.

DTC deployments also need air cooling since up to 25% residual rack heat still needs to be removed by air, and since we don’t necessarily know how much air and liquid cooling we’ll need in the future, this highlights the need to design holistically for our thermal cooling needs which will include both air and liquid cooling to meet current and future ITE demands. Moving forward, we should expect a combination of air and liquid cooling systems (Hybrid Cooling Infrastructure) instead of a one size fits all cooling solution.

3. Using Greener and More Sustainable Materials in the White Space

In 2025 we’ll be seeing data centers looking for additional ways to lower their GWP (Global Warming Potential), and one untapped method up to now using recycled materials within the data center white space whenever possible. This includes but is not limited to products such as cold and hot aisle containment systems that already play a major role in reducing data center energy usage.

By adopting a more sustainable approach to data center design with recycled products, we’ll help offset the environmental impact by using an eco-friendlier infrastructure. Since more will be focusing on gaining credits towards LEED certification in 2025, using green and recyclable materials will be a natural strategy moving forward in the white space.

4. More Data Centers International Expansion

As in 2024, we can expect continued expansion throughout the globe in 2025. With traditional locations already squeezed for capacity and power, the industry needs to look elsewhere for new data center locations will continue. While the US accounts for approximately 40% of the global market, we can expect the recent trend of significant growth in Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Latin America to continue.  

5. Consequences for Ignoring Sustainability

With Europe having already implemented the new CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) and EED (Energy Efficiency Directive), the US is next with California already approving Senate Bill 243 (sb 253) for some data centers as soon as 2025. This means that data centers need to prove they’re being environmentally conscious with their energy usage, and products like data center containment will become a fixture in all data centers as the industry will have no choice but to modify their energy usage practices in accordance with these and future regulations.  

Concluding Thoughts

Data center owners and operators will have serious decisions to make in 2025 the industry struggles to meet sustainability goals and requirements. As energy consumption continues to rise in 2025, the way we’ll achieve ongoing green initiative goals as an industry is by developing and using more sustainable practices which makes future net zero carbon targets possible and attainable.