Data is stored in thousands of servers in tech giants such as Google and Amazon, and in small company data centers such as Rackspace. Despite unprecedented growth in recent years, cloud computing still faces challenges. Data centers usually require a lot of electrical energy, which comes from "dirty" energy such as mineral fuels. In the coming years, with the rapid increase in cloud computing demand, energy consumption will also rise.
Martin Fink, chief technology officer of HP, told CNBC in an interview with CNBC that "current energy consumption is not sustainable because the data volume will grow rapidly in the coming years."
Greenpeace estimates that if the global cloud computing industry is compared to a country, its energy consumption ranks sixth, between Germany and Russia. By 2020, the demand for electricity in the cloud computing industry will increase by more than 60%.
The US Internet giant Amazon was named by Greenpeace last month as one of the "dirtyst" cloud computing service providers. Of Amazon's cloud computing service, Amazon Web Services, clean energy accounts for only 15%, and the rest come from coal, nuclear power and natural gas.
The government and companies are increasingly concerned about data center energy consumption issues and require more proactive measures to reduce data center energy consumption. For example, clean energy startups such as industry giants such as Hewlett-Packard and Iceotope are developing technologies that can reduce energy consumption in data centers.
In order to handle the massive amounts of data generated by consumers and businesses, data centers need to consume large amounts of power. Cooling high-density computers in data centers requires a lot of energy.
Fink said, "HP is investing heavily in the development of technologies that can improve the efficiency of data center operations and reduce energy consumption." HP introduced new low-energy servers last year, which consume 89% less energy than traditional servers.
Iceotope has developed a liquid cooling technology to increase the operating efficiency of existing data center equipment. This liquid-cooled technology eliminates the need for energy-intensive fans and air conditioning in the data center. Peter Hopton, founder of Iceotope, said, "Most data centers use high-speed rotating fans to cool IT equipment, but for heat dissipation, air is an inefficient medium and the liquid's heat dissipation efficiency is high. Thousands of times. In order for cloud computing to be environmentally friendly, companies like Iceotope hope to greatly reduce the impact of cloud computing on resources by increasing efficiency and reducing costs."
Some data centers have begun to use clean energy such as wind energy or solar energy. Bob Landstrom, director of product development for Interdata, the European data center company, explained that “As an industrial-scale energy consumer, data centers can provide support for renewable energy by purchasing large amounts of clean energy. "Clean energy accounts for 90% of Interxion's energy consumption.
According to Greenpeace, the six major cloud computing brands - Apple, Box, Facebook, Google, Rackspace and Salesforce - promised 100% of their data centers will use clean energy.
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