Carbon costs of storage: A U.K. perspective

In order to achieve the higher performance year on year required by the 2030s for future LHC upgrades at a sustainable carbon cost to the environment, it is essential to start with accurate measurements of the state of play. Whilst there have been a number of studies of the carbon cost of compute for WLCG workloads published, rather less has been said on the topic of storage, both nearline and archival. We present a study of the embodied and ongoing carbon costs of storage in multiple configurations, from tape farms through to SSDs, within the U.K. Tier-1 and Tier-2s and discuss how this directs future policy.