Does Cloud Computing Really Offer a Way to Reduce Energy Demands and Greenhouse Gas Emissions?
June 26, 2013
Grazed from CSRWire. Author: Editorial Staff.
Increased use of cloud computing services will reduce the dependence on energy and help reduce global environmental damage with savings of over US$2.2 billion (€1.65 billion) and is 95% more efficient where 1 tonne of greenhouse gas (GHG) created by cloud leads to 20 tonnes abatted from customers according to the findings of a study released today by a research team from Harvard University, Imperial College and Reading University, sponsored by Microsoft Europe and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI).
The study claims that 11.2 TWh less energy will be consumed annually by the time 80% of public and private organisations in the countries studied opt to provide cloud-based email, customer relationship management and groupware solutions to their staff, beyond current levels of adoption. This translates to 75% of the energy consumed by the Capital Region of Brussels or 25% of the energy consumed by London. It is equivalent to abating 4.5 mega tonnes of CO2 emissions annually or taking 1.7+ million cars off the road. 60 per cent of these potential savings relate to small or micro-sized firms…
Dr Peter Thomond, who led the study, explains: “The findings show, contrary to the perception of power hungry data centres, that the energy efficiency of cloud infrastructure and its ‘embedded carbon’ outperform on-site services by an order of magnitude. This is only 3 cloud applications, there are hundreds more.”…
Read more from the source @ http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/35840-Does-Cloud-Computing-Really-Offer-a-Way-to-Reduce-Energy-Demands-and-Greenhouse-Gas-Emissions-