Hitachi Vantara flags AI data centre energy squeeze

Hitachi Vantara has released its FY2025 Sustainability Report, outlining progress across its environmental, social and governance priorities.

The report focuses on energy use in data infrastructure as demand rises from artificial intelligence and other data-intensive workloads. It highlights changes in storage systems, lifecycle assessment and governance processes as customers face higher power, cooling and reporting requirements.

Pressure is growing across the industry as operators try to contain energy costs while expanding digital services. Citing International Energy Agency estimates, Hitachi Vantara noted that global data centre electricity consumption could exceed 1,000 terawatt-hours by 2026, making efficiency central to both operating budgets and sustainability plans.

At the product level, the company pointed to its VSP One platform, including VSP One Block High End, as part of its effort to reduce power and cooling demands in enterprise and AI environments. It also highlighted integrated tools for energy monitoring, carbon reduction and sustainability reporting.

Lifecycle focus

The report also covers lifecycle assessment work across the VSP One Block, File and Object portfolios. According to Hitachi Vantara, this is intended to improve measurement of environmental impact and give customers better visibility into Scope 3 emissions.

It also describes the Clear Sight dashboard as a tool designed to show customers energy consumption and carbon usage data. The report says the dashboard provides information that can be used to assess system efficiency and environmental impact.

On materials, Hitachi Vantara reported increased use of post-consumer recycled plastics in storage systems, with up to 50% recycled content in key components. It also said less than 0.3% of materials were sent to landfill, with most reused or recycled through recovery and circularity programmes.

Governance changes

Beyond hardware and materials, the report describes changes to internal governance and emissions tracking. These include stronger cross-functional governance, improved audit readiness and more accurate data across Scope 1, Scope 2 and key Scope 3 categories.

The measures are presented as part of an effort to align with science-based emissions reduction targets and changing ESG reporting standards. For technology suppliers and their customers, the quality of emissions data has become increasingly important as procurement teams and regulators demand more detailed evidence of environmental performance.

"Sustainability is increasingly tied to operational performance and business outcomes," said Akinobu Shimada, Chief Executive Officer, Hitachi Vantara. "In FY2025, we focused on helping customers manage the growth of AI and data while improving efficiency and reducing environmental impact. Our investments in infrastructure innovation, lifecycle design and governance are enabling customers to achieve powerful results."

Customer examples

The report includes several customer case studies intended to show operational outcomes linked to infrastructure upgrades. In Belgium, wastewater treatment operator Aquiris upgraded its storage platform with VSP One Block for critical operations that process more than 110 million cubic metres of wastewater a year and collect more than one million data points a day.

According to Hitachi Vantara, the changes were aimed at improving operational efficiency, resilience and reliability while reducing power use and carbon emissions through more efficient data management. In Turkey, DestekBank used VSP One Block during a retail banking expansion and reported a 25% reduction in data centre energy consumption, a 35% increase in application performance and a 20% reduction in total cost of ownership.

In India, media group Malayala Manorama modernised its data infrastructure with Hitachi Vantara technology. The report says the project reduced data centre rack space by 66% and cut power and cooling costs by 70% while supporting round-the-clock print, broadcast and digital operations.

Aquiris was among the customers quoted in the report. "Hitachi Vantara is helping us fulfill our goal of creating a sustainable process for safeguarding supplies of clean water and supporting the growth and development of Brussels," said Juan Ochoa, Managing Plant Director, Aquiris. "The performance gains with VSP One Block will be significant. We are constantly collecting data, tracking KPIs and monitoring our purification processes. The improvement in storage capabilities will help us respond quickly to issues and optimise our plant operations."

The report shows how infrastructure vendors are positioning energy efficiency and lifecycle measurement as part of mainstream technology procurement rather than as a separate sustainability exercise. As AI workloads put more strain on data centres, suppliers face growing pressure to show not only computing output, but also how equipment affects electricity use, cooling needs, materials recovery and emissions reporting.