Category: Environment
- Carbon footprint – laptops vs servers, Intel vs ARM ()
The carbon footprint of a laptop is mostly in the manufacturing. Servers are different, and ARM chips are starting to change the game.
- Sustainable computing – where to focus? ()
Progress in renewable energy has pushed IT carbon footprints down, revealing how much more work is needed in manufacturing.
- Zoom, video conferencing, energy, and emissions ()
It is obvious that Zoom is better for the environment than flying but what about vs driving an EV or public transport? The problem is we can’t be sure.
- Spectrum of transparency ()
More rigorous transparency regulations for negative externalities to force companies to measure, and reduce.
- Fighting over who has the greenest public cloud ()
Public cloud price wars have ended, and a new battle over who is the greenest has begun.
- How much energy will 5G consume? ()
5G networks have larger antennas, larger bandwidths, and higher base station density. This means up to x3 more energy consumption. How can the industry expect x20 more energy efficiency by 2030?
- Assessing the suitability of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol for calculation of emissions from public cloud computing workloads ()
A copy of my paper published in the open-access Journal of Cloud Computing.
- Hiding greenhouse gas emissions in the cloud ()
The scientific journal, Nature Climate Change, has published a paper I’ve written about how moving to the cloud can result in greenhouse gas emissions being hidden.
- How much water do data centers use? ()
US data centers are expected to use 660 billion litres of water in 2020. In 2018, Google consumed 15.79bn litres and Microsoft 3.61bn litres, primarily for their data centers. What is this used for and how does it impact the environment?
- Energy efficiency, edge compute and serverless ()
We want to encourage more efficient use of cloud resources but designing incentives is hard. That changes with serverless and edge compute. Now energy usage is linked to price.