Sustainability in the Cloud

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. It’s 2021, and we are in the midst of both a climate crisis, and a global pandemic (made more likely to happen by said crisis).

By 2030, it is estimated that the tech industry (ICT) will account for between 8 and 20% of the global electricity supply. It’s on par with aviation in terms of current carbon footprint, the swathe of digital devices, data and networks is unfathomably large.

As a business, where and how you host your websites, servers, and applications makes a real difference to both your energy consumption, and carbon footprint. Geography makes up as much a part of your carbon footprint as your cloud provider. Even the time of day you use your resources can make a significant difference.

So what are the top ways to reduce your footprint, while still having cutting edge technology at your disposal?

Pick your location

Where you host your data is directly related to what energy is available to your datacenter. Countries with a higher percentage of renewable energy on their grid, have more to provide to the cloud operator, and therefore have a lower carbon footprint.

For example Belgium and Finland are great examples of European regions where GCP get over 70% of their energy from low carbon infrastructure.

Each Cloud is different

Moving to the cloud will almost always be more efficient than self hosting, the economy of scale allows for micromanagement of power use, but each cloud offers different specialties.

Google Cloud Platform

While GCP (Google Cloud Platform) has been Carbon Neutral since 2007 (Meaning they offset for any carbon they do use), they still have a long way to go before they become true ‘Net Zero’ (100% of energy coming from 100% renewables, 100% of the time) in 2030.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft has promised to become Carbon Negative by 2030, meaning after that point they will be removing carbon from the atmosphere as they operate, ultimately aiming to remove all carbon emitted since their 1975 founding by 2050. Their annual emissions hit 16 million tonnes in 2021, but similarly, they have been offsetting these since 2012.

If you are currently using Microsoft Azure, they have a calculator in preview to show your footprint on their platform.

Amazon Web Services

Very much at the back of the pack, Amazon is kicking their heels, pledging to become carbon neutral by 2040. As amazon accounts for 31% of the cloud, this may just be too little too late. However, they are currently offsetting some of their most popular regions including Frankfurt, and Ireland.

Go serverless

Many modern web applications can now be run on serverless architectures, they go by many names (serverless, functions, cloud run etc), but they share key core benefits for business.

As serverless apps start and stop with demand, and tend to be billed by seconds of use, most applications can benefit from saving money and only use the resources that they need, which in turn drives down footprint. With a generous free tier on all cloud platforms, smaller projects will often fall into the monthly free zone.

Pick your timing

If your application doesn’t need to run 24/7 (think data crunching and machine learning rather than websites) you can build your workloads to accommodate interruptions and scheduling by your cloud provider to only operate during off peak hours.

Once again this will not only save you money on running costs, you can also utilise known times when renewable energy is abundantly available. Doubling up on this, you will also save energy networks from using surge power plants that tend to be gas powered.

Static in the air

Running a ‘brochure’ website? If the content doesn’t regularly change (more than say, twice a day) consider a static website. These sites can still be engaging and have some dynamic content, but unlike traditional websites, they are built ahead of time and served from a CDN (content delivery network). Users will benefit from blazingly fast load times, and your organisation will be running a highly optimised, super lightweight, and efficient website, with minimal hosting cost, and reduced impact.

Offset the rest

Once you have reduced and calculated your impact, until your organisation reaches Net Zero, there is going to be a figure for your emissions. Offsetting sits as an option when all other routes have been exhausted, as they tend to have deferred impacts, and don’t directly address the issues of today. If you opt to offset, consider a well established certified provider, to ensure your funds are going to a worthy project.

The Watcher on the Wall

All that is left to do is monitor and refine, an ongoing process that is central to any digital project.

By cleverly using modern infrastructure in the cloud, your organisation can have a considerable impact on curtailing its carbon footprint. As we seek to address our impact on the world, seemingly innocuous changes can have the biggest repercussions.

Many remedies will have a knock on improvement for users of your digital infrastructure, and a cost reduction to your organisation. Sustainability really can be a triple win.

Extract from the Greenwood Campbell Human Guide to Tech
Click here for the full guide