How Dirty is Your Data? A Look at the Energy Choices That Power Cloud Computing

Executive Summary
Information Technology (IT) is disruptive. Largely for the better, IT has disrupted the way we travel, communicate, conduct business, produce, socialise and manage our homes and lives. This disruptive ability has the potential to reduce our dependence on dirty energy and make society cleaner, more efficient and powered renewably. But as we applaud the positive, visible impacts and measurable, game-changing potential of IT, we also need to pay attention to what’s behind the curtain.

The ‘cloud’ is IT’s biggest innovation and disruption. Cloud computing is converting our work, finances, health and relationships into invisible data, centralised in out-of-the-way storage facilities or data centres. This report seeks to answer an
important question about this trend, currently underway across the globe: As cloud technology disrupts our lives in many positive ways, are the companies that are changing everything failing to address their own growing environmental footprint?

A quick glance at the letter grades on our Cloud Energy Report Card (found on page 7 of this report) indicates that many IT brands at the vanguard of this 21st century technological shift are perpetuating our addiction to dirty energy technologies of the last two centuries.

We analysed the data centre investments of 10 top global cloud companies and our findings show a trend across the industry towards extolling the external effects of IT products and services, while failing to take seriously the need to power this widespread aggregation of the world’s information with clean, renewable electricity.

Parts of our individual lives are becoming more efficient even as we consume more. IT can enable us to cut down on energy intensive practices by allowing us to work from home with teleconferencing and telecommuting tools. We can now read our electricity use in real time and manage it better accordingly.

We can stream music on the internet instead of taking up space on our hard drives. In each of these examples, there is potential for us to choose to live in less energy-intensive ways, cut our personal greenhouse gas emissions, and shrink our footprint, individually and collectively.

The IT sector has a choice to make as well. As the demand for IT products and services grows exponentially, in the US, Europe and particularly in developing economies such as India and China, so does the amount of data we produce globally. That information requires physical storage and access to reliable electricity. Indeed IT’s server farms are expanding and multiplying rapidly. In our technologically interconnected world, data centres are the factories of the 21st Century.

Whereas the factories of the Industrial Revolution got us into a mess by burning coal and releasing carbon pollution into the
atmosphere, the factories of the Technology Revolution have the ability to make use of better energy choices. In the following report, we have looked at available information about the choices being made today by major IT brands about where to site and how to power their factories. It is clear that their commitment to transformative change, which includes responsibility for their own growing footprint, is still in question.

Additionally, much of the information that would allow us to assess the net benefits of the cloud by also measuring the true environmental cost of these localised, power-hungry data centres is missing. IT companies, which broadly declare transparency a major tenet of their business model, are highly secretive about their own operations. This veil of secrecy makes it nearly impossible to measure the actual benefits of cloud technologies or understand the extent to which IT’s growing need for electricity is increasing the use of dirty energy.

While a few companies have clearly understood that the source of energy is a critical factor in how green or dirty our data is, and have demonstrated a commitment to driving investment attached to clean sources of electricity, the sector as a whole still seeks to define 'green' as being 'more efficient'. This failure to commit to clean energy in the same way energy efficiency is embraced is driving demand for dirty energy, and is holding the sector back from being truly green.

Throughout this report, we attempt to shed light on the state of the cloud’s energy footprint by examining available information about IT companies and their data centres. First, we have attempted to explain and summarise the problem through examples of data centre investment and a graded analysis of the infrastructure choices of leading cloud companies.

We also assessed best practices and leading footprint mitigation strategies. Finally, we have included some key recommendations for a sector that wishes to be seen as green and transformative, but is coming up short on it’s transparency and energy choices.

Read Full: How Dirty is Your Data? A Look at the Energy Choices That Power Cloud Computing

PDF format, 2.37MB, 36Pages.

GREENPEACE
Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning organisation that acts to change attitudes and behaviour, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace.

INTRODUCTION
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