Greenpeace recently released its “make IT green” report which predicts that cloud computing will increase the energy problems. It alleges that Cloud computing will consume nearly 2 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity a year by 2020.

[Image Source: www.matternetwork.com]

Greenpeace names Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Intel, and others in its report saying:

With the growth of the cloud, however, comes an increasing demand for energy. For all of this content to be delivered to us in real time, virtual mountains of video, pictures and other data must be stored somewhere and be available for almost instantaneous access. That ‘somewhere’ is data centres – massive storage facilities that consume incredible amounts of energy. But decisions about how the cloud will be built out are being made by business leaders primarily concerned with quarterly profit statements and earnings for shareholders.

Companies like Facebook, Google, and other large players in the cloud computing market must advocate for policy change at the local, national, and international levels to ensure that, as their appetite for energy increases, so does the supply of renewable energy…

However, Alex Steffan quickly retorts:

Computing accounts for a bit less than 3% of U.S. energy usage, according to Lawrence Livermore Labs. The global IT industry as a whole generates about 2% of global CO2 emissions.

Cars, on the other hand, which the vast majority of the people Greenpeace is trying to target also own, are the single largest contributor to climate change, according to NASA, exceeding all other sources in their impacts, and exceeding computing’s global impacts by more than a factor of ten. Greenpeace (I’m a supporter) has made a lot of noise about computing’s climate impacts, while the average commute or drive to the mall is likely far, far more a threat to the future than the average month’s Google searching.

This is also supported by the fact that companies like Intel (xeon 7500) and IBM (energy efficient data centre) have already taken steps to counterfeit the changes towards the effects on carbon footprints.

There are various arguments which specify that cloud computing requires a great deal of energy but some others point out how it benefits the environment. But there still is plenty of homework to be done to evaluate which side outweighs the other side.

Good case study of Google Apps use in educational institutes.

Emerging Indian markets have a lot of scope for new technologies. However, the small scale shops and other markets don’t have enough resources to buy and use the softwares available.

photo courtesy: www.xerox.com

Xerox has set-up an “Innovation Hub” in Chennai and is working to provide the software to these businesses as a low-cost document service through a cloud computing mode.

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