Cloud computing is revolutionising our lives. The digital transformation is driving our economy forward, while it is advocated that the cloud supports sustainable growth. The environment is considered due to improved efficiency. Is this actually true, however? Can the cloud be the solution to tackle global warming or is it an new type of greenwashing (Matthews, 2013)?
This blog will address both the environmental benefits and concerns of the transformation towards cloud storage, in comparison to traditional data storage.
So, how does the cloud differ from local IT storage? Cloud storage increases energy and resource efficiency. Energy efficiency is improved by the way that energy is used on the cloud. Data centres for the cloud are supposed to be more streamlined than traditional data centres. Businesses can reduce carbon emissions by switching to cloud facilities.
Resource efficiency is mostly due to dematerialising the economy. The cloud allows companies to stop investing in hardware and stop frequent updating. This contributes to reducing waste, further benefiting the environment. On top of that, the cloud enables proper online communication, limiting the need for business travels (and commuting, especially relevant with the present COVID-19 crisis) (Matthews, 2013).
On the other side, concerns are raised about energy consumption of the cloud. When companies use traditional data storage methods, they are required to publish their IT emissions. However, when firms move to the cloud, their power use is shifted towards cloud ventures like Google, Amazon or Microsoft (Mytton, 2020). The emissions then become indirect and no longer require publishing. The cloud enterprises themselves have been obscure about their energy consumption. So, it is not precisely known how much energy these cloud data centres actually use. Back in 2011, The New York Times reported that one Google data centre consumes the same amount of energy as 200 thousand homes (Glanz, 2011). Google responded that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks due to improved efficiency. On top of that, the tech sector is the biggest consumer of renewable energy.
So, what can be concluded about the environment? The cloud creates a situation where energy consumption is dominated by a few major parties that lack transparency. This has made the sum of emissions difficult to calculate. However, the cloud increases the potential of emissions-reduction massively. Huge data centres running on renewable energy could singlehandedly shift our digital economy towards actual sustainable growth.
Sources:
Glanz, J. (2011). Google details, and defends, its use of electricity. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/technology/google-details-and-defends-its-use-of-electricity.html#:~:text=Google%20disclosed%20Thursday%20that%20it,full%20of%20computers%20use%20electricity.
Matthews, R. (2013). How environmentally sustainable is cloud computing and storage? Planet Watch. https://earthmaven.io/planetwatch/energy-economics/how-environmentally-sustainable-is-cloud-computing-and-storage-QF6qx7l9L0-e4uh7aE39sw#:~:text=Conclusion,by%20millions%20of%20metric%20tons
Mytton, D. (2020). How much energy do data centers use. David Mytton. https://davidmytton.blog/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-use/
image:
https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/climatechange/resources/Pages/topic-08.aspx
Interesting article Joram! I remember that there has also been discussion in the Netherlands about a data center from Google located in Eemshaven. This data center fully operates on renewable energy sources (a wind park and solar panels), however, these sources of renewable energy were actually meant for use by the local population. Hence, locals were complaining on the news about the fact that Google now uses all of ‘their’ renewable energy. In addition, the question could be raised what the actual benefit is for the Netherlands of hosting a Google data centre. If the data centre of an American company only uses ‘our’ renewable energy sources and does not provide jobs or other benefits, then it could be argued that it would be better for us as a country if the data center was located elsewhere.
Referring back to your blog, I can imagine that in the near future cloud ventures like Google and Amazon will be obliged to share energy consumption numbers of their data centers. As data centers will only be larger and more data centers will possibly be build, I am quite curious how regulations concerning this issue will develop. Thanks for the good read.
Hi Yara, thank you for your comment. I had not heard of Google’s data centres in the Netherlands before. I imagine there will be certain benefits (permits for instance) for the government and involved municipalities. Also, the construction and expansion of a Google data centre would probably involve the local workforce. The local workforce could also benefit in the long term; data centres will need maintenance.
On the other hand, I completely understand that the locals are annoyed that their sustainable energy is taken away from them. Let’s hope that the data centres will serve many local companies and help the population.
I really liked your post Joram! It is very interesting to read about the environmental implications of cloud computing. The reason that I really think this is a good post is because even though I had never thought about this subject, I got a feeling that I understand the different perspectives about the subject. Instead of looking at it from only one side, you wrote about the ‘good and bad’ sides of both traditional in house hardware and cloud, and what problems exist that would have to be fixed to better calculate and decrease emissions.
An interesting question to ask is how the emissions could be measured to actually know if it is more efficient like e.g. Google claims, or whether they are saying that just because it is more profitable for them, for example because they are in a country with cheaper electricity costs. Would you expect that there could be a difference in emissions between data storage and computing GPU’s for example.
Hey Benan, thanks for your response. I believe transparency is key for this topic. I do believe that Google’s case about improved efficiency is reasonable. In my opinion, international governments should really step up here because the big cloud companies have such complicated processes nowadays which local governments have trouble to fully understand. The multinational corporations have a lot of power due to extreme capital and promise of jobs, giving them a lot of bargaining power with governments. International cooperation and legislation would be ideal to figure out the full truth about power consumption of both cloud computing and storage.