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Green cloud computing and the environment

New reports back up claims that cloud computing helps data centres to reduce energy consumption.

Green cloud computing

The U.S. Data Centre Energy Usage Report states that power usage could remain constant through the 2020s, thanks to the influence of cloud technology. In the US, electricity usage previously increased by a minor 4% from 2010 to 2014; which is a substantial improvement over the 24% uptake between the periods 2005 and 2014.

In 2010, data centres accounted for between 1.1% and 1.5% of the world’s total energy consumption. US Data Centres accounted for a higher proportion of the country’s consumption, at between 1.7% and 2.2%.

This information comes in response to claims by Greenpeace, calling into question the efficiency of public cloud providers.

How are cloud computing services green?

David Linthicum, a cloud expert at InfoWorld states:

“What makes the cloud green is if enterprises stop building new data centres every time they run out of capacity, and instead turn to cloud providers.

Enterprises spend millions of dollars each year adding data centre infrastructure in support of many servers running at about 3 to 5 percent capacity. That wastes not only energy in usage, but also in the server’s creation, plus a whole lot of raw materials, too.

Simply using public clouds is a huge step in the green direction. By sharing servers, we can do much more with much less — including power.”

If you’d like to learn more about green cloud computing and carbon conscious hosting contact a member of virtualDCS today.

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