Cloud
Sustainability Watch
Advocacy to cut the climate impact of cloud computing, AI, and data centers
The environmental impact of cloud computing has been an afterthought.
Times have changed.
US data centers produced 105 million tons CO2e in the past year
– Reported in “Environmental Burden of US Data Centers in the Artificial Intelligence Era” Nov 14 2024
Every company’s online computing takes a bite out of the world’s power supply, uses up drinking water, and emits carbon dioxide.
Most organizations and their tech teams don’t prioritize energy efficiency and environmental harm when making decisions about cloud computing. Solutions like low-emissions water-conserving data centers, green software design, streamlined AI use, and greenhouse gas emissions tracking all exist today. But it takes technology decision makers to embrace these options to reduce expense and slow their companies’ climate impacts and resource consumption.
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Recent Headlines
The environmental impact of cloud computing, AI, and data centers is a breaking news topic. Here is a collection of recent articles from leading publications that add to the public conversation and spur action.
Energy Vault, RackScale partner on 2 GW/20 GWh of data center batteries
Utility Dive| December 17, 2024
Microsoft to launch zero water consumption cooling for future data centers
Network World | December 10, 2024
Exxon Plans to Sell Electricity to Data Centers
New York Times | December 11, 2024
Environmental Burden of United States Data Centers in the Artificial Intelligence Era
Arxiv preprint | November 14, 2024
Big Tech on Track to Pour More Than $180B into Data Centers This Year
DataCenter Knowledge | December 12, 2024
An interview with Annie Freeman
Apiumhub
Our Blog
AWS wants you to do some green software design
The hyperscalers are working to convince their customers to be highly efficient because demand is outstripping supply.
ExxonMobil builds gas plants for data centers and locks in customers for 30 years
ExxonMobil announced it will build gas-fueled electric plants. And it’s because of data centers.
A photonic chip to vastly reduce the energy demands of AI computations
A photonic chip invention uses light to run all types of neural network computations at very low energy use rates and with speed and accuracy comparable to existing AI chips.