How ‘green’ is cloud computing? Probably greener than you think

Cloud computing is currently estimated to be responsible for at least 2% of the world's total electricity consumption. This may seem like a worryingly high figure, especially given the rate at which cloud services are currently growing - but cloud providers actually have the potential to make substantial energy savings.

Public cloud services allow companies to share a pool of resources, eliminating what would be a huge amount of data centre duplication, which results in considerable waste. Organisations only pay for the minimum resource they need and scale up when demand rises, without the need of additional physical servers. Not only does moving to this OpEx model generate massive cost savings for IT departments when compared to the restrictive CapEx models they're used to, it also means providers only have to provision compute as and when it's needed.  The improvements come from a more efficient use of IT without the over-provisioning of capacity businesses usually have.  This doesn't eliminate the problem altogether - cloud service providers also need to have head-room to allow for the growth of their customers - but power consumption is a bigger concern for service providers than individual IT departments, so it will usually be far better managed at that level.  A recent study commissioned by Google reported that the use of cloud-based services can reduce an organisation's energy footprint by up to 87%.

IT inevitably needs power to operate and so even businesses using cloud services should continue to explore different ways to reduce their carbon footprint further. For example, at Databarracks we work in partnership with a UK based carbon management organisation, co2balance, in order to maintain a carbon neutral presence.

co2balance provides us with carbon calculation, management and reduction services in return for funding to support valuable, charitable projects. By offsetting our carbon emissions, not only are we drastically reducing our carbon footprint, but we are able to provide improvements to health, welfare and social conditions in poverty-stricken countries around the world.

IT managers are under constant pressure to defend their departmental spend, and the potential reduction in both cost and energy consumption is a great argument for the adoption of cloud services. The flexibility of cloud means finding the right compromise between operational efficiency and ethical awareness is no longer a just a possibility, but an inevitable shift in the way we consume IT.