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How green are cloud computing companies?
Does using cloud computing technology lead to reduced carbon emissions? Apparently not, says a Greenpeace report'
Shikha Samant
New Delhi
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This is a Greenpeace study of on 14 IT companies on what are the kinds of energy do they use.
Image Courtesy : Greenpeace |
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Many IT companies that are rapidly building their cloud are actually compromising with the type of energy that is being used, says a recent report brought out by environment NGO Greenpeace. Major ICT companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon are in the league of expanding their businesses by setting up data centres relying on some of the dirtiest sources of energy like coal and nuclear energy.
However, on the other hand, there are a few companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo! that have realised their responsibility and have prioritised access to clean sources of renewable energy in their cloud expansion, says the Greenpeace study.
So that brings us to the question of what cloud computing is about.
Cloud computing involves a technique that uses the internet and central remote servers to maintain data and applications. Cloud computing services are user friendly because it facilitates use of applications without installation and anyone can access his/her personal files on any computer world wide provided there is internet connectivity. Cloud computing is far more reliable then single server configuration and also provides data security. Some examples of cloud computing are emails like Yahoo!, Gmail and Facebook notifications.
However, what needs to be examined more carefully is the energy consumption by these cloud computing companies. Many reports claim that the technology is useful for the environment. This technology encourages individual computers to use less hardware and less hardware equates to less energy consumed thereby leading to lower carbon emissions.
A report published by non-profit Carbon Disclosure Project, which tracks corporate climate change information, outlines that cloud computing is projected to assist large US companies save $12.3 billion in energy costs and cut out 85.7 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually by 2020.
Another report released by the Carbon Disclosure Project (London) has found that blue-chip companies can reduce their carbon emissions by 50 percent if they move their data storage operations to the cloud. The study found that in the UK, large companies that use cloud computing could achieve annual energy savings of £1.2 billion (€1.39 billion or $1.90). Carbon emissions saved is equivalent to the annual emissions of over 4 million passenger vehicles.
There is not one globally accepted methodology to calculate carbon emission by cloud computing companies. According to Open Data Centre Alliance it is calculated as a product of amount IT equipment used in standard unit, energy overhead of datacenter, kWh of electricity used per unit and carbon emission of electricity sources. In case of automobiles carbon emission can be calculated by measuring the amount of fuel consumed. For example 1 litre of petrol produces 2.2 kg of CO2 and 1 litre of diesel produces 2.63 kg of CO2.
Having said that the other side of the story as per the Greenpeace reports is that these cloud data centres require large amount of energy and many companies are overlooking the source of it. The reason behind it is the fact that electricity plays a critical role in the cost structure of companies that use the cloud. Data centres are the modern day factories of IT companies containing thousands of computers that store and manage our ever growing collection of data. Steps have been taken to design specially engineered data centres, software coding, and efficiency of the servers to make it ‘Green’. However, despite significant improvements in that regard, the exponential growth in cloud computing far outstrips the energy savings.
The combined electricity demand of the internet/cloud (data centres and tele-communications network) globally in 2007 was approximately 623 billion kWh, which is more than that of India’s demand of electricity says the report.
According to 2008 SMART 2020 study, the ICT sector is responsible for 2 percent of global greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions.
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The estimated green house gas emissions of ICT sector according to a report by 2008 SMART 2020 study. As per the report this sector is responsible for 2 % of global green house gas emissions. It shows emissions from three major areas GHG associated with our online and electronic world namely-data centres, telecoms devices and computer devices.
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The telecom sector too is not far behind. In developed markets, the rapid growth of mobile data traffic is leading to the need for expanded data centres, which require large amount of energy. In developing markets also, especially China and India, the growth in telecom sector is driving expansion of the mobile telecom network infrastructure at a brisk pace. As per the reports, India had 903.73 million mobile connections as of January 2012 and most of the mobile towers and grid-connected towers rely on diesel generators to power their network operations. The consumption of diesel by the telecom sector stands at 3 billion litre annually. What is disturbing is that this consumption is responsible for 10 million tonnes of carbon emission.
There have also been reports that most companies avoid revealing their data on energy consumption as that would give their competitors information about the scale of their infrastructure, their actual performance, or their cost structure. This has often resulted in some companies using inappropriate metrics in place of meaningful metrics .The lack of transparency from major ICT brands remains one of the biggest reasons for the use of unclean energy by ICT companies. Hence the public are being misguided by the ‘clean’ tag that these ICT companies use.
What is needed is transparency and actual substantiating of data to be tabled by the ICT companies, proper and new methodology and good metrics in calculating assumed performance, particularly the consideration of the source of electricity being used. People should understand that energy efficiency alone is not an appropriate measure of environmental impact.
Pointing fingers at cloud computing companies alone is not the solution. A worldwide change in policy is required to promote green energy, points out modern environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg. “As long as coal power is cheaper than green energy, the cloud computing companies will — like everyone else — be making use of it. Thus, the trick is to invest more into R&D to innovate the price down on green energy rather than blaming the cloud computing companies,” he says. Perhaps it is time to rethink our ‘green’ strategies.
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