[An excellent article on the carbon reduction potential of clouds. And one of the few analysis that distinguishes between energy consumption and efficiency versus carbon footprint.
The two are often not related. Now if there were only a tax on carbon emissions, the business case to move to clouds would be very compelling – BSA]
http://www.itincanada.ca/index.php?cid=452&id=14519&np=1
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the renewable vs. fossil fuel impact can be significant: “For example, data centers in the US Northwest (where hydroelectric generation is common) run on power with roughly half the carbon intensity of the electricity that powers data centers in the Midwest (where coal power is common). For a large data center with 50,000 servers, the difference can be equivalent to the carbon emissions from thousands of cars.
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So what are the broader implications of these findings? Moving from micro to macro, Verdantix researchers have built a model that extrapolates these results to the US economy as a whole – or at least to the impact that would be created through cloud adoption by 2,653 global firms with US revenues in excess of $1 billion – an exercise that presents a compelling argument for widespread cloud implementation. According to Verdantix, a “US cloud computing adoption forecast shows a big economic saving – $12.3 billion a year by 2020,” based on reduction of electrical costs only (excluding other savings included in the case study as this would be too complex), as well as “potential carbon reductions of 85.7 million metric tons per year by 2020, equivalent to the annual emissions from 16.8 million passenger vehicles.” These forecast results are impressive – and should offer makers of cloud components and service providers everywhere a strong, independent statement of the “twin eco” benefits of cloud
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Green Internet Consultant. Practical solutions to reducing GHG emissions such as free broadband and electric highways. http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro
This blog is about using ICTs to develop climate change preparedness solutions built around Energy Internet and autonomous eVehicles
Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview
Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.
Using autonomous eVehicles for Renewable Energy Transportation and Distribution: http://goo.gl/bXO6x and http://goo.gl/UDz37
Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG
High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: https://goo.gl/24SiUP
Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet: http://goo.gl/niWy1g
How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd