According to the Geological Society of America, the carbon emission as of June 2020 is at a peak compared to the last 23 million years. The carbon footprint has already formed a thick layer of toxic gases that directly affects the global climate. Planet Earth is in severe danger, and we need to realize the urgency and address this problem.
World climate experts propose that every responsible individual can contribute their respective stake towards positive climatic changes. It is now time for organizations to act responsibly towards climatic improvement.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab), data centers across the worldwide consume about 3 percent of the global electricity supply. They account for about 2 percent of total Greenhouse Gas emissions. A greenhouse gas is a harmful gas present in the atmosphere which absorbs infrared radiation and traps heat in the atmosphere. And this leads to serious environmental problems. Enterprises can, therefore, reduce carbon emission by migrating Data Centers to Cloud. Your organization’s reduction in carbon footprint not only contributes to a better climate but can also significantly reduce IT-related spend (refer our ZCCM model). This also creates a better social collaboration.
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There is an immediate need for CIOs to think towards Carbon-Negative Organizations.
4 Considerations for CIOs to Build Green Businesses
As we know, Cloud computing is energy efficient. Let’s look at the factors that make Cloud Migration a greener choice for organizations. CIOs must diligently incorporate these choices, and build net-zero carbon footprint organizations.
1. Reform Data Centers with Energy Efficiency
On-premises data centers need a continuous power supply, cooling systems. Any disposal of equipment adds to e-waste. But by migrating to Cloud, energy consumption can drastically reduce by 80%. Research shows that by establishing an energy-efficient data centers, enterprises can reap benefits like improved performance and lowers operational costs that also create a negative carbon impact. Automation can be effectively leveraged to drive down expenses related to electricity, fuel, and resources. The combination of clear objectives, better asset management, automation in Cloud Migration creates a greener data center, which in turn results in exponential growth of overall efficiency.
2. Green is the New Black
Major cloud computing providers have already started marching towards carbon neutrality and are utilizing renewable energy sources to power their data centers. Such green resources include solar power, geothermal, hydropower, and wind energy. Hence by migrating infrastructure to cloud or through new deployments in the existing Cloud environment, organizations will attain scalability with green practices.
3. Virtual Availability with Shared Network
One significant aspect of Cloud computing is a virtual network, which ensures optimized resource utilization. A Cloud Data Center securely stores and shares information virtually across servers located at multiple locations simultaneously. This results in reduced physical server count, lower e-waste, and fewer machine and hardware. This is one of the green solutions enterprises can leverage.
4. Slash Greenhouse Gases (GHG) Emission
Unlike on-site data center that produces several greenhouse gases during the lifecycle, Cloud data center dramatically shrinks the carbon emission through lower energy consumption. Cloud computing undeniably has a notable effect on carbon emissions, and CIOs must consider this to lower their organization’s carbon footprint.
Giant Cloud provides such as Oracle, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft announced strategies to achieve carbon neutrality.
At Oracle Open World 2018, the company stated two specific goals. First, was Zero Waste Promotion and the second, Model Carbon Reduction and Responsibility for Corporate Events. It has been diligently working towards becoming a greener company.
Microsoft aims to go carbon negative by 2030 and has announced that its cloud data centers will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2025. As of today, Microsoft is 60% operating on renewable energy sources and is expected to increase by an additional 10% by 2023.
Google announced its plan to go carbon-negative way back in 2009. It has been adhering to that plan for the past 12 years and has been operating with renewable energy. Google data centers are among the most efficient, and these green practices reflect business goals, including environmental improvement, performance, and higher demand.
Amazon stated that it is committed to operate the business in an environmentally friendly way and to achieve 100% renewable energy utilization for global infrastructure. AWS claims that it was successful in obtaining over 50% renewable energy usage by 2018. AWS aims to achieve 100% net zero carbon by 2040.
To recap, zero-carbon emissions goals come with many advantages for the environment, as well as for the organization. It is time for CIOs to understand these benefits and build smart and futuristic organizations. They must set clear environment-oriented goals, metrics, and implement the best practices to achieve the set goals. CIOs hold accountability for information management and can leverage data center cloud migration to achieve energy efficiencies. The organization thereby can also reap many other long-term benefits, including lower operational costs, exponential growth, flexibility, scalability, and optimized resource utilization.
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