Environmental Impact

Environmental Impact

Some analysts believe cloud computing is bad for the environment. In May of 2008 the Toronto Star said “Data centers consumed 0.6 per cent of the world's electricity in 2000, and 1 per cent in 2005,” but it did not account for business servers that may reside in data-centers (TheStar.com). Just as virtualization can reduce the number of physical servers required to achieve the same task, which saves both power and money, so can cloud computing. Using existing cloud computing services saves power and money because companies like Amazon and Google have already invested in building a large distributed computer network. They also invest in solutions that save them money by reducing power consumption which reduces the environmental impact. If every server on the Internet was a distributed cloud server in a data-center, it would be better for the environment.