Blog
Our Panel at San Francisco Climate Week
Tech teams and others must start building awareness of the environmental impact of online computing by asking what might be the carbon footprint of their organization’s cloud applications.
Carbone4’s evaluation of customer emissions tracking dashboards from hyperscalers
The team at the French consulting firm Carbone4 did a valuable analysis of the emissions calculators available to customers at: AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, and OVHCloud.
Data Centers Disrupt Communities
A difficult fact of siting data centers is that nearby communities endure high water consumption, impacts of power supply, exposure to noise from cooling systems, and the eyesore of the facility. Community members often object to data center construction while local governments are frequently welcoming.
The Big 3 Cloud Providers
The size, growth and influence of AWS, Azure, and GCP—the Big 3 brands and market leaders in global cloud computing services—create an obligation to invest as much money and attention as possible into reducing environmental impact in the face of exploding market demand.
Why do data centers impact the environment?
Professionally run data centers are the most power-efficient and carbon-efficient method of delivering the world’s computing at this time. McKinsey & Company’s 2023 report “Cloud-powered technologies for sustainability” estimates that in 2050, cloud usage will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5GtCO2e annually compared to staying with existing data center decisions.
The environmental impact of cloud computing
Cloud computing’s data center operators and IT professionals are responsible for bringing the environmental impact of the cloud to heel. These groups built out the cloud computing industry, and their daily decisions steer its direction.
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. We should do it.
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.
Google builds renewables next to its data centers
Here is an article about Google’s $20B project with Intersect Power to develop wind and power on data center campuses that will skip the multiyear wait for grid connection.
Visit the Cloud Sustainability Watch Library
Our library contains articles, blogs, research, and podcasts about the environmental impact of cloud computing, GenAI, and data centers. Also our favorite go-to sources.
Community organizers emerging in landscape of data center siting
Our ongoing enjoyment of GenAI will require more data center capacity construction, and communities are objecting.