Cloud Computing's dirty Green secret

While there may be a general mood of 'saving the planet can wait until another day' at the moment, the Green agenda is still pervasive in the public sector.

One of the many arguments for moving to Cloud Computing is based on its environmentally-friendly credentials with sundry Cloud advocates from staking the claim that the Cloud model is inherently a greener option than traditional methods. 

But environmental lobby group Greenpeace would beg to differ. Following up on comments it made last year, the group has this week released a new study titled 'How Dirty Is Your Data?' in which it criticises the energy choices made by many Cloud Computing market leaders - and attacks their alleged lack of transparency over their Green credentials.

There are some top line conclusions that set out Greenpeace's stall:

• Data centres to house the explosion of virtual information currently consume 1.5-2% of all global electricity; this is growing at a rate of 12% a year.
• The IT industry points to Cloud Computing as the new, green model for our IT infrastructure needs, but few companies provide data that would allow Greenpeace to objectively evaluate these claims.
• The technologies of the 21st century are still largely powered by the dirty coal power of the past, with over half of the companies rated herein relying on coal for between 50% and 80% of their energy needs.
• IT innovations have the potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of the economy, but IT's own growing demand for dirty energy remains largely unaddressed by the world's biggest IT brands
• Data centre clusters (Google, Facebook, Apple) are cropping up in places like North Carolina and the US Midwest, where cheap and dirty coal-powered electricity is abundant.

The report argues that despite significant advances in energy efficient data centre design, the Cloud industry is "both largely ignoring the importance of using renewable power as a top criterion for locating new infrastructure and is not transparent in disclosing its energy use."

The report notes: "The 'Cloud' is IT's biggest innovation and disruption. Cloud Computing is converting our work, finances, health and relationships into invisible data, centralised in out-of-the-way storage facilities or data centres. This report seeks to answer an important question about this trend, currently underway across the globe: As Cloud technology disrupts our lives in many positive ways, are the companies that are changing everything failing to address their own growing environmental footprint? "

Greenpeace argues that the industry has a choice to make and the time to make it is now. "As the demand for IT products and services grows exponentially, in the US, Europe and particularly in developing economies such as India and China, so does the amount of data we produce globally. That information requires physical storage and access to reliable electricity," its report notes.

"Indeed IT's server farms are expanding and multiplying rapidly. In our technologically interconnected world, data centres are the factories of the 21st Century. Whereas the factories of the Industrial Revolution got us into a mess by burning coal and releasing carbon pollution into the atmosphere, the factories of the Technology Revolution have the ability to make use of better energy choice."

Concealing the Cloud's dirty secret?

So far, so straightforward. But Greenpeace goes on to allege that the Cloud industry is not taking its Green responsibilities as seriously as it should and in fact is concealing vital data:  "Much of the information that would allow us to assess the net benefits of the Cloud by also measuring the true environmental cost of these localised, power-hungry data centres is missing. IT companies, which broadly declare transparency a major tenet of their business model, are highly secretive about their own operations. This veil of secrecy makes it nearly impossible to measure the actual benefits of Cloud technologies or understand the extent to which IT's growing need for electricity is increasing the use of dirty energy."

Greenpeace also criticises the industry's understanding of what Green really means, a bone of contention that might be gnawed over for quite some time to come. "While a few companies have clearly understood that the source of energy is a critical factor in how green or dirty our data is, and have demonstrated a commitment to driving investment attached to clean sources of electricity, the sector as a whole still seeks to define 'green' as being 'more efficient'," argues Greenpeace. "This failure to commit to clean energy in the same way energy efficiency is embraced is driving demand for dirty energy, and is holding the sector back from being truly green. 

"Until recently, green efforts were almost solely defined by energy efficiency improvements, or decreasing the relative amount of energy consumed for delivery of computing services. Such IT energy efficiency efforts have largely been motivated out of a desire to curb rising energy needs and related costs, and, to some extent, with regard for environmental performance. IT engineers have steadily delivered significant improvements to data centre design, energy efficient software coding, and the energy efficiency of computers, efforts which have produced dramatic improvements in computing power while reducing the amount of equivalent energy use. "

In the study, Greenpeace evaluated 10 Cloud companies on their transparency, infrastructure siting decisions, and mitigation strategies. Cloud leaders such as Facebook and Amazon are among those who receive ailing marks in one or more categories. Of the ten brands graded, content delivery network firm Akamai earned top of the class recognition for transparency, Yahoo! had the strongest infrastructure siting policy, and IBM and Google demonstrated the best overall approach to reduce their current footprints.

Good Clouds

On the plus side, Greenpeace does highlight some cases of good practice, including:

• In Iowa, Google has signed a 20-year power purchasing agreement with a wind energy company, though the clean electricity that will be generated there is not yet linked to a specific facility.
• Google has pledged to retire the renewable energy credits earned by the agreement. Microsoft announced an agreement to buy wind energy for its Dublin data centre.
• i/o Data Centers is installing a massive solar array on top of its new 580,000 sq ft facility in Phoenix, with 5,000 panels that will generate a total 4.5MW at peak capacity.
• Next Generation Data (NGD) in Newport, Wales, claims to be 100% renewably powered through its purchasing agreement with SmartestEnergy, the UK's largest purchaser of electricity from independent generators of renewable energy.
• In Iceland, GreenQloud is powered 100% by geothermal and hydropower energy, delivering hosting and storage services.

But as far as Greenpeace is concerned, these remain the exceptions rather than the rule and poses the question: "Will companies such as Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Google and Yahoo! perpetuate the dirty energy issues of older, entrenched industries, or will the innovative IT sector band together to embrace a transformative business model that prioritises a future built on clean, renewable energy? "

So what does Greenpeace want to see happen? "We expect these companies to play a pivotal role in ensuring we move to clean, safe renewable energy system and avoid future disasters like Fukishima," said Gary Cook, IT policy analyst at Greenpeace.

"But the IT industry's failure to disclose basic information on its rapidly growing energy footprint has hidden a continued reliance on 19th century dirty coal power to power its 21st century infrastructure. We think consumers want to know that when they upload a video or change their Facebook status that they are not contributing to toxic coal ash, global warming or future Fukishima's."

When the current austerity measures ease up, it's inevitable that Green will become a higher priority agenda issue for ICT senior managers in the public sector. Unless Cloud services providers become more transparent about their energy policies it's likely that groups like Greenpeace will become increasingly vocal critics of spending public money on the Cloud.