Companies can reduce carbon emissions by 90 per cent using the cloud

According to Microsoft research conducted by Accenture and WSP Environment & Energy

Cloud computing offers efficiencies gained through shared services

Large companies can reduce their carbon emissions by a net 30 per cent when choosing to run business applications in the cloud, according to a study commissioned by Microsoft and released today.

The study, entitled The Environmental Benefits of Moving to the Cloud, which was conducted by Accenture and WSP Environment & Energy, also argues that small organisations can reduce their emissions by up to 90 per cent.

The study focused on three widely deployed Microsoft applications: Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamic CRM. These were used to assess the carbon footprint of server, networking and storage infrastructures for three categories of company size (100, 1,000 and 10,000 users).

“This represents one of the first quantitative studies of the environmental impact of cloud computing,” said Andrew Armstrong, vice president of WSP Environment & Energy.

“While the benefits for organisations are clear, at a broader industry level, the impact that cloud computing may have on driving down ICT carbon emissions across the industry is significant,” he added.

Dynamic provisioning, multi-tenancy, prioritising server utilisation and increased datacentre efficiency are the main ways in which cloud computing can offer green efficiencies.

“The study’s findings confirm what many organisations – large and small – have already discovered: cloud computing is more economical and uses IT resources more efficiently,” said James Harris, Accenture’s managing director of Cloud Services.

“Cloud computing delivers multiple efficiencies and economies of scale, which contribute to the reduction of energy consumption per unit of work,” he added.

These results contradict comments made by Greenpeace in March, that suggested cloud computing increased a company’s carbon footprint.

Greenpeace’s research claimed that at current growth rates, datacentres and telecommunication networks will consume approximately 1.936 billion kilowatt hours of electricity by 2020, which is triple current consumption levels.

The primary concern for Greenpeace was that companies were using ‘dirty fuels’, such as coal, to run datacentres.

“The study is a welcome contribution from Microsoft on the impact of cloud computing. It reinforces what we have been saying, if we want the cloud to be green, it needs to be built around renewable energy sources, not fossil fuels,” said Gary Cook, climate and energy policy analyst for Greenpeace.