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So called “cloud” computing is huge user of electricity

text-cat-question  I can’t understand why the world is not curbing its gargantuan appetite for storing every little bit of trivia that anybody ever put   on the internet – every little email, comment etc. Even years after you’re dead, all your useless stuff will be there.  But not sweetly up in the sky – No, stored in some dirty great data pile of computers somehwere – using up space and gobbling electricity.

It’s good that tech firms  are going for efficiency and renewable energy. But for goodness sake, can’t we all just eliminate a lot of this cyber rubbish ?

ENOUGH-the-concept

For tech firms, the cloud makes carbon curbs compulsory BY VALERIE VOLCOVICI NEW YORK Thu Oct 16, 2014 (Reuters) – As mobile devices proliferate and big business turns to cloud computing to cut costs and improve efficiency, technology companies are facing a double challenge: powering energy-hungry data centers to expand the cloud while keeping carbon emissions from skyrocketing.

Cloud computing has paved the way for technologies such as video conferencing and smart building management that can make corporations greener. But it is also shifting a larger share of electricity consumption – and the carbon output associated with it – onto firms such as Google (GOOGL.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) that run the data centers or manufacture computer servers.

The trend has made low-carbon energy access and conservation a competitive necessity in the technology sector. Faster, smaller servers and renewable energy contracts accomplish both, industry sources said.

“As you take a look at the fact that the cloud today uses as much energy as the country of Japan every year, you know it doesn’t take much longer until we run out of energy,” Gabi Zedlmayer, chief progress officer at Hewlett Packard (HPQ.N), said in an interview as part of the Reuters Global Summit on Climate change from Oct 13. to Oct. 16………

THE CLOUD IS SIXTH-LARGEST ELECTRICITY USER

The growth of cloud computing and current use of the Internet results in a electricity demand that would rank sixth as a country in current rankings, according to an April report on greening the Internet by environmental group Greenpeace.

Demand could grow by 60 percent or more by 2020, the report said, as the online population grows globally.

The group said there is a compelling business case for companies to rapidly shift to renewable energy to power their data centers since renewable energy costs are dropping……..http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/16/us-climatechange-summit-cloud-computing-idUSKCN0I51Z620141016

October 18, 2014 - Posted by | 2 WORLD, ENERGY

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