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@cstross "69% into computation" is physically impossible. I mean ... how could it? It's not like you go in with a hard drive, and when you take it out there is 10kWh of data on it. Energy just doesn't work that way. Except for the miniscule amounts of energy that leaves the data center as light (through windows or fiber), all electrical energy that goes in leaves the building as heat. Through coolant water, through coolant air, conductive/radiation through the walls and roof ... but as heat. In that sense, a data center has an energy efficiency of almost 0%.

(The exception being, the heat is used in some way. To heat buildings, to heat water for residential use, greenhouses, ... heat will then, again, leave these buildings again in the same way that it now leaves the data center building. But people can make use of the warmth in these buildings before that happens.)