How Green Is the Cloud
Greenpeace has released a report covering a number of cloud providers and ranking their cloud infrastructure on it's green credentials. The results are fairly damning to the inditry and show that cloud services are just moving the IT energy problem and not solving it. Businesses looking to make their IT more sustainable need to consider whether cloud services are really a greener alternative.
The estimates the It sector is responsible for 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions and has broken these down into three areas: data centers, telecoms and computers. The total output is 830 million tons of CO2 with a breakdown of 407 tons for computers, 307 tons for telecoms and 116 tons for data centers.
However due to the economic downturn there was only a 56% increase in global energy demand between 2005 and 2010 instead of the expecting doubling of energy required. However this needs to be put into perspective as even a 56% increase is huge when considering the global electricity consumption during the same period remained the same.
But how does this affect cloud computing? With the growing trend for businesses to be looking into cloud computing as a cost effective and sustainable alternative to running systems in-house the pressure on data center energy use will climb, this can be seen by the increase in energy use for 2012 alone rising 19% or 31GW.
There have been increasing attempts by some companies to portray the cloud as inherently €green,€ despite a continued lack of transparency and very poor metrics for measuring performance or actual environmental impact. The question is, are these cloud services really a greener alternative. First up the consolidation of loads and the greater use of hardware resources is to be applauded as is the focus from a number of these cloud providers on ensuring their infrastructure is energy efficient. But the crux of the situation comes from where this energy is sourced.
Three of the largest IT companies building their business around the cloud - Amazon, Apple and Microsoft - are all rapidly expanding without adequate regard to source of electricity, and rely heavily on dirty energy to power their clouds. Looking into Greenpeace's report it can easily be seen that even the even the best user of renewable energy, Dell, is still sourcing over a quarter of its energy needs from coal and nuclear. And the worst, Oracle, at two thirds of its energy is sourced from either coal or nuclear. So it can easily be seen a lot of work still needs to be undertaken.
However the biggest issue is the decided lack of transparency that cloud service providers give businesses in the sustainability of their infrastructure. There needs to be a rapid transition into providing the information to allow businesses to make the required informed decision before they move ahead on cloud projects.
As an advocate for sustainable IT solutions it makes it hard to recommend cloud services as a suitable way for businesses to proceed. As you relinquish the control of these areas it's easy for them to become forgotten. With an internal environment you remain in full control of where the energy is sourced from, how efficient the infrastructure is and maintaining efficient use of it.
With the increasing amount of energy efficient technologies available from vendors such as Dell it makes it an easy decision for businesses to maintain the use of in-house technology solutions and to migrate to using renewable energy sources either directly through their own investment or purchased through their electricity provider.
In this way businesses can have direct control and influence on the sustainability of their IT investment and ensure that they are indeed making the right green choices.
The estimates the It sector is responsible for 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions and has broken these down into three areas: data centers, telecoms and computers. The total output is 830 million tons of CO2 with a breakdown of 407 tons for computers, 307 tons for telecoms and 116 tons for data centers.
However due to the economic downturn there was only a 56% increase in global energy demand between 2005 and 2010 instead of the expecting doubling of energy required. However this needs to be put into perspective as even a 56% increase is huge when considering the global electricity consumption during the same period remained the same.
But how does this affect cloud computing? With the growing trend for businesses to be looking into cloud computing as a cost effective and sustainable alternative to running systems in-house the pressure on data center energy use will climb, this can be seen by the increase in energy use for 2012 alone rising 19% or 31GW.
There have been increasing attempts by some companies to portray the cloud as inherently €green,€ despite a continued lack of transparency and very poor metrics for measuring performance or actual environmental impact. The question is, are these cloud services really a greener alternative. First up the consolidation of loads and the greater use of hardware resources is to be applauded as is the focus from a number of these cloud providers on ensuring their infrastructure is energy efficient. But the crux of the situation comes from where this energy is sourced.
Three of the largest IT companies building their business around the cloud - Amazon, Apple and Microsoft - are all rapidly expanding without adequate regard to source of electricity, and rely heavily on dirty energy to power their clouds. Looking into Greenpeace's report it can easily be seen that even the even the best user of renewable energy, Dell, is still sourcing over a quarter of its energy needs from coal and nuclear. And the worst, Oracle, at two thirds of its energy is sourced from either coal or nuclear. So it can easily be seen a lot of work still needs to be undertaken.
However the biggest issue is the decided lack of transparency that cloud service providers give businesses in the sustainability of their infrastructure. There needs to be a rapid transition into providing the information to allow businesses to make the required informed decision before they move ahead on cloud projects.
As an advocate for sustainable IT solutions it makes it hard to recommend cloud services as a suitable way for businesses to proceed. As you relinquish the control of these areas it's easy for them to become forgotten. With an internal environment you remain in full control of where the energy is sourced from, how efficient the infrastructure is and maintaining efficient use of it.
With the increasing amount of energy efficient technologies available from vendors such as Dell it makes it an easy decision for businesses to maintain the use of in-house technology solutions and to migrate to using renewable energy sources either directly through their own investment or purchased through their electricity provider.
In this way businesses can have direct control and influence on the sustainability of their IT investment and ensure that they are indeed making the right green choices.
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