The Internet Cloud has a Dirty Secret

[Stephen Schneiter]

Here is an interesting article that was shared by James Stanger about the amount of energy that is consumed by data centers. It is interesting that the more we move to the cloud, the more energy will be consumed. The article does mention efforts by Amazon and Google to use alternative energy for their data centers, but still a lot of work needs to be done. All our Google searches and streaming videos from Netflix and other sources is leaving a big carbon footprint.

Good conversation starter to have with your students.https://fortune.com/2019/09/18/internet-cloud-server-data-center-energy-consumption-renewable-coal

 

[Stephen P]

Sometimes, I leave a big methane footprint...

 

[Walt Jaqua]

Seems these large companies are probably doing all they can do to efficiently power their farms/data centers in a clean manner. I wonder how that compares to the previous pre-cloud inefficient use of power in all the companies that previously used their own on-site data centers.

 

[Stephen P]

Thank you, @Lee McWhorter , for the appropriate reaction!

On a serious note, while these huge data centers are consuming massive amounts of power, how much power consumption is consequently being shifted away from the end user locations? If an enterprise stops using local servers--or at least scales back the on premise cluster(s)--then the power consumption goes down. It's a bit like the argument (used both for and against) over electric cars. Sure, they don't emit carbon dioxide and pollutants, but the power plants do.