The Environmental Cost of Cloud

Computing: Assessing Power Use

and Impacts
Jonathan G. Koomey, Ph.D.
http://www.koomey.com
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory &
Stanford University
Presented at Green:Net
San Francisco, CA
March 24, 2009
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 For users, the cloud offers
infinitely scalable computing
on demand

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So why should cloud users
care about power use?

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Power use strongly affects
costs for “in-house” IT
services (the alternative to
relying on the cloud) AND

4
Cloud computing suppliers
have two inherent
advantages on power and
costs over “in-house” IT
(load diversity and
economies of scale)

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(As an aside, most people
think the true total cost for
“in-house” IT is far lower
than it actually is)

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 Data centers, where the
cloud resides, are where the
world of bits meets the world
of atoms

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The cloud uses electricity.
How much?

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World data center electricity
use, 2000 and 2005

Source: Koomey 2008

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 How much is 152B kWh?
Italy

South Africa

Mexico

World Data Centers

Iran

Sweden

Turkey

0 50 100 150 200 250 300

Final Electricity Consumption (Billion kWh)

Source for country data in 2005: International Energy Agency, World Energy
Balances (2007 edition) 11
Trends push power use both
up and down

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 Pushing power use up…
•  Increasing demands for
–  E-commerce
–  VOIP
–  Internet search
–  software as a service
–  video downloads
–  resilience in the face of disaster
–  regulatory compliance (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley)
–  IT-enabled business transformation
•  More transistors on a chip + more RAM +
more volume servers
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 Summary:
Delivery of IT services is
increasing rapidly

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 Pushing power use down…
•  Virtualization/consolidation
•  Cooling and power constraints
•  Recognition of constraints by the C level
•  Metrics
–  Servers + other IT equipment (Spec Power,
80 plus, E*)
–  Site infrastructure
•  Utility rebates (PG&E)
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 Summary:
Information technology is
becoming more energy
efficient at a furious pace

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Internet electricity intensity
Electricity per GB transferred down 30% per year!

Source: Taylor and Koomey (2008) for 2000 and 2006 data.
Trends for 2000 to 2006 extrapolated to 2008 by JK. 17
Data center costs are strongly
affected by IT power use

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Annualized data center costs

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Two important equations

Power related terms

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 In spite of our historical
progress, there’s still great
potential for improving the
energy efficiency of data
centers

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Many efficiency opportunities

Source: EPA report to Congress 2007 22

 Improving the energy
efficiency of data centers is as
much about people and
institutions as it is about
technology

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 Efficiency opportunities
•  Improve asset management and
utilization (multiple benefits)
•  Improve efficiency of components (e.g.
power supplies)
•  Implement consistent metrics and track
over time
•  Align incentives to minimize True Cost of
Ownership
•  Think “whole system redesign” (RMI)
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 Misplaced incentives
•  Energy, efficiency, and performance metrics
not standardized
•  Not charging per kW but per square foot
•  Split accountability
–  Who pays the bills, IT or facilities?
–  Who bears the risk of failure?
•  Hierarchy and culture differences
•  Piling safety factor upon safety factor
•  Not focusing on total costs for delivering
computing services
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Cloud computing suppliers
have at least two big
advantages on power and
costs over “in-house” IT

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1) Diversity: spread loads
over many users,
improving hardware
utilization

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 2) Economies of scale:
implementing technical +
organizational changes is
cheaper and easier than for
small IT shops

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 The biggest environmental
story about information
technology (IT) is not direct
electricity use (which is
relatively small) but how IT
affects efficiency in the
broader society
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Why?

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 Moving electrons is always
less environmentally
damaging than moving atoms

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 Example: paper vs. PDF
•  Mass of paper = 5 g/sheet
•  Mass of electrons to move a 1 MB PDF
file of that page (based on average
network electricity intensity of 7 kWh/
GB) is 1.7 x 10-5 g
•  Ratio of paper mass to electron mass ~
300,000

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 Conclusions
•  The cloud is responsible for 1-2% of the world’s
electricity use.
•  Absolute electricity use growing fast (doubling
every 5-8 years)
•  IT services are growing much faster than
electricity use (doubling every year or two).
•  Electricity productivity, defined as computing
services delivered per kWh, is increasing
rapidly and this trend promises to continue.
•  The indirect environmental and productivity
benefits of IT are likely to be more important
than direct electricity use. 33
 Key web sites
•  EPA on data centers + 2007 Report to Congress
http://www.energystar.gov/datacenters
•  LBNL on data centers: http://hightech.lbl.gov/
datacenters.html
•  The Green Grid: http://www.thegreengrid.org/
•  The Uptime Institute: http://www.upsite.com/
TUIpages/tuihome.html
•  SPEC power: http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/

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 References
•  Koomey, Jonathan. 2007a. Estimating regional power consumption by servers:
A technical note. Oakland, CA: Analytics Press. December 5. (http://
www.amd.com/koomey)

•  Koomey, Jonathan. 2007b. Estimating total power consumption by servers in the

U.S. and the world. Oakland, CA: Analytics Press. February 15. (http://
enterprise.amd.com/us-en/AMD-Business/Technology-Home/Power-
Management.aspx)

•  Koomey, Jonathan, Kenneth G. Brill, W. Pitt Turner, John R. Stanley, and Bruce
Taylor. 2007. A simple model for determining true total cost of ownership for
data centers. Santa Fe, NM: The Uptime Institute. September. (http://
www.upsite.com/cgi-bin/admin/admin.pl?admin=view_whitepapers)
•  Koomey, Jonathan. 2008. "Worldwide electricity used in data centers."
Environmental Research Letters. vol. 3, no. 034008. September 23. <http://
stacks.iop.org/1748-9326/3/034008 >.

•  Taylor, Cody, and Jonathan Koomey. 2008. Estimating energy use and
greenhouse gas emissions of Internet advertising. Working paper for IMC2.
February 14. <http://imc2.com/Documents/CarbonEmissions.pdf>.
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