Is living in the ‘cloud’ costing the Earth?

It’s become so easy to use ‘cloud computing’ to store our pictures, music and other files online that most of don’t even really think about where those files go – or what kind of carbon footprint they make.

Hidden emissions of data centres

Data centres – the home of the ‘cloud’ – account for almost a quarter of the IT sector’s global carbon footprint. When you consider all the IT gadgets we use in everyday life, you’ll realise that a quarter is a lot.

You’d probably never look twice at a data centre if you walked past it. They’re simply big warehouses filled with computers that store your files. But all those computers require electricity. And those machines are fragile little flowers, too, so they need a lot of air-conditioning to make sure they don’t overheat.

Since there are 509,147 data centres worldwide, all of that adds up to a lot of computers, a lot of air-con, and a big carbon footprint.

Lower-carbon working

Of course, the flip side is how much the ‘cloud’ has changed our lives. 

For one thing, it’s never been easier to work from home. Not only do you get an extra hour in bed as a result of ‘tele-commuting’, but you cut out your polluting daily drive into the office (let’s ignore the issue of whether how hard you work might be negatively correlated with spending the day in your pyjamas). Since driving accounts for 22% of the UK carbon emissions, this is nothing to be sniffed at. And did you know that driving congested streets increases your emissions by 300%? 

Even if you do still slog into the office every day, your company might still have gone paperless thanks to the cloud. The Carbon Disclosure Project says that, by 2020, large UK companies using cloud computing could cut carbon emissions equivalent to taking 4 million cars off the road.

A cloud powered by clean energy? 

Clearly, data centres provide us with a lot of positives to outweigh their energy-hog negatives. (You’re reading this article thanks to data centres, after all.) 

There’s some good news, too. In order to combat their hefty carbon footprint, some data centres are choosing to generate their own renewable energy. Of course, there remain many more that are still powered by fossil fuels. And, with cloud computing on the rise, this isn’t an issue that’s going away. 

What are your thoughts on ‘living in the cloud’? Are you able to work from home? Do you think the positives of cloud computing outweigh the negatives?