Author James Glanz created a stir in September with his New York Times article, when he wrote that cloud computing and Big Data are actually big energy wasters. I have written about this controversy previously for the SIIA and have found that not to be the case. In fact, data centers are environmentally friendly for three reasons:
- Large data centers are more efficient than small and medium-sized data centers, so regardless of this looking negative at first blush, the electricity/unit of computing is less.
- Devices themselves are using less energy especially as desk tops and laptops give way to tablets and smartphones,
- Cloud data centers can and will drive to renewable energy, as detailed in this report. Companies like Oracle, Adobe, and IBM are devoting their considerable resources to sustainable computing practices, and this trend will only increase as they continue to work to make data centers more efficient and clean.
A number of voices have come out in support of cloud computing’s environmental benefits for these very reasons. The New York Times hosted quite a few on their Room for Debate page. Here is a short sampling.
Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure at Google, knows from personal experience how data centers work, operating Google’s servers, networks, and data centers. He writes on the New York Times website:
“Because of our obsession with efficiency, we’re able to help others be more efficient as well. Small and medium data centers use two-thirds of the total energy because it’s much harder to run them efficiently, so the trend of replacing on-premise servers with efficient cloud services will reduce the amount of energy used to run the same workload.”
Similarly, Jonathan Koomey, research fellow at the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University refutes Mr. Glanz:
“Modern cloud-based data centers are much more efficient and have much higher utilization levels than standard data centers, giving them substantial economic and energy-related advantages. And the shift to mobile computing promises big efficiency gains for users as well. For example, laptop computers, which typically use a third to a fifth of the power of desktops, outsold desktops for the first time in 2009 (according to IDC data). Sales of tablets, which are even more efficient, are growing much faster than those for laptops.”
Gary Cook, the senior I.T. sector analyst for Greenpeace International’s Cool IT campaign, also provides cautious optimism, writing:
Customers need companies to be more transparent about their energy choices so that they can understand the true environmental performance of their Internet and cloud use and make more informed choices. If given the information, people will choose a company that chooses clean energy. We can – and should – be able to feel good about our likes, tweets, photos and music, but it’s up to these companies to take the bold steps to make that possible.
Charles Babcock of Information Week summarizes the other side thusly:
“Everyone is doing a lot more computing, as the story notes. But as we do so, the amount of electricity consumed per unit of computing is going down, which the story somehow misses. Nowhere does the Times address this salient point. Instead, it concludes we are doing a lot more computing and, therefore, we are all guilty of driving environmental degradation. If you’re going to reform the world, you need to build a better soapbox than this.”
Tracy Carlin is a Communications and Public Policy Intern at SIIA. She is also a first year graduate student at Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture and Technology program where she focuses on intersections in education, video games and gender.