The Dream:  The Axon is a powerful networking device, and it's designed to help reduce ecological harm caused by data centers and Power Plants.  HPI and our partners at the Environmental Science center are proud to be stewards of ancestrally  Duwamish Suquamish, and Muckleshoot land.  Now, after years of refinement, the Axon is our eco-friendly contribution to sustainable accessible, and affirming telecommunications infrastructure.

The Two Fronts of Water Consumption:

To understand the water footprint of a data center, we have to look at two distinct metrics: Direct and Indirect water usage.

1. Direct Water Usage (The Cooling Problem) Data centers generate an immense amount of heat. To keep servers from failing, facilities rely heavily on evaporative cooling systems.

• The Cost: On average, a standard data center directly consumes roughly 0.48 gallons of water for every kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity used by its IT equipment.

2. Indirect Water Usage (The Power Generation Problem) This is the hidden half of the equation. Before a data center can even use electricity to run standard optical transceivers (SFPs) or cooling fans, that electricity has to be generated by a power plant. Thermoelectric power plants (coal, natural gas, nuclear) boil vast amounts of water to create steam to turn turbines, and use even more water to cool those systems down.

• The Metric: We look at the national grid average for consumptive water use in power production.

• The Cost: In the United States, it takes an average of 2.0 gallons of water evaporated at the power plant to generate a single kWh of electricity.

The True Cost: Calculating the Total Footprint

When we combine these two factors, the true environmental impact becomes clear:

• Direct Cooling: 0.48 gal/kWh

• Indirect Power Generation: 2.00 gal/kWh

• Total Water Footprint: 2.48 gallons per kWh

For every single kilowatt-hour of power consumed by a data center, roughly two and a half gallons of water are permanently removed from local watersheds.

The Axon Stops Consumption at the Source

This is where traditional sustainability efforts often fall short. Data centers spend millions trying to optimize their cooling towers to lower their Direct Water Usage. But as the math shows, the vast majority of the water is lost before the electricity even reaches the building.

The only way to meaningfully reduce the Indirect Water footprint is to reduce the demand for power itself.

This is the driving philosophy behind our Axon technology. Standard SFPs are power-hungry bottlenecks. By drastically increasing fiber optic capacity and efficiency at the hardware level, the Axon prototype fundamentally lowers the power draw required to transmit data.

When you upgrade the hardware to draw less power, the data center runs cooler (reducing Direct cooling water), and the facility demands less electricity from the grid (reducing Indirect power plant water). It is a compounding effect. We calculate our environmental impact not just in gigabits per second, but in the kilowatt-hours saved—because every kWh saved by the Axon keeps an average of 2.48 gallons of water in the environments where they belong.

The Two Fronts of Carbon Emissions

When modern tech companies discuss sustainability, they often point to their data centers and claim "zero direct emissions." While it is true that the buildings themselves don't have smokestacks, there is a massive, hidden carbon footprint required to keep the digital world turning.

Every gigabit of data moved through a fiber optic network demands electricity, and generating that electricity releases staggering amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. At Hansen Photonics, we believe that true sustainability can't rely on carbon offsets or outsourced blame. We are tackling the problem at the hardware level. By fundamentally reducing the power required to transmit data, our gigabit-speed Axon technology stops carbon emissions squarely at the source.

Here is a look at the true carbon cost of data transmission, and how upgrading infrastructure changes the math.

To understand the carbon footprint of a data center, we have to look at the difference between what happens inside the building and what happens on the power grid.

1. Direct Emissions (The Illusion of Zero) Unlike water, which a data center actively consumes on-site to keep its servers from overheating, a data center's direct, operational carbon footprint is incredibly small.

• The Reality: Under normal conditions, data centers do not burn fossil fuels to process data. Aside from routine testing of emergency backup generators, the facility itself effectively emits 0.00 pounds of CO2 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) used by its IT equipment.

2. Indirect Emissions (The Power Generation Problem) This is where the true environmental cost lies. Because the data center does not generate its own power, 100% of its carbon footprint is outsourced to the thermoelectric power plants burning fuel to keep the facility running.

• The Metric: We look at the grid average for Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE).

• The Cost: Across the blended U.S. power grid, it emits an average of 0.81 pounds of CO2 to generate a single kWh of electricity. In regions heavily reliant on coal power, that number skyrockets to an astonishing 2.31 pounds of CO2 for every single kWh generated.

The True Cost: Calculating the Total Footprint

When we combine these factors, the environmental impact of power-hungry network hardware becomes clear:

• Direct Facility Emissions: 0.00 lbs/kWh

• Indirect Power Generation: 0.81 to 2.31 lbs/kWh

• Total Carbon Footprint: 0.81 to 2.31 pounds per kWh

For every single kilowatt-hour of power consumed by a data center, up to two and a half pounds of carbon dioxide are pumped into the atmosphere by the grid.

The Axon Stops Emissions at the Source

This is where traditional industry solutions—like buying renewable energy credits to legally "offset" grid usage—act as a band-aid on a much larger wound.

The only way to genuinely prevent these emissions is to reduce the continuous demand for power itself.

This is the driving philosophy behind our Axon technology. Standard optical transceivers (SFPs) are power-hungry bottlenecks. By drastically increasing fiber optic capacity and efficiency at the hardware level, the Axon prototype fundamentally lowers the power draw required to transmit data.

When you upgrade the hardware to draw less power, the facility demands less electricity from the grid. It is a one-to-one reduction in fossil fuel reliance. Every kWh saved by replacing standard SFPs with Axons prevents nearly a pound of CO2 from ever being generated. Deployed at scale, reducing this continuous power draw acts as a "digital forest" for your infrastructure, offsetting carbon emissions with the same localized impact as preserving ancient groves in Mount Rainier or the canopy of the Hoh Rain Forest.

RESEARCH

Water:

CO2: