This post was previously published on ACOEL.org.
I read an article last week in Fortune magazine (free registration required) about the large amount of energy actually consumed by cloud storage and thought that must only apply if you are actively uploading, changing, or downloading documents and pictures. But I was wrong. With a little digging, I was able to determine that all of those family photos and videos of your cats (not to mention huge folders of environmental analyses) automatically uploaded to iCloud, Google Drive, Box.com, DropBox, and Amazon actually consume lots of electricity even when they are just sitting idle. Apparently the servers, which are energy hogs because they require lots of cooling, are actively managed on a regular basis to prevent loss or degradation of data, regardless of whether we are accessing the information or not.
According to one source, uploading data and storing it in the cloud consumes 3-7 kWh per gigabyte, roughly a million times more than storing it on your hard drive. So storing 100 gigabytes of data in the cloud for one year (maybe a few thousand photos or a few hours of video) would result in the emission of roughly 0.2 tons of CO2.
I am not suggesting we all stop using the cloud for storage. After all, it is convenient, largely safe, and probably more environmentally sustainable than paper file storage. It’s just that it isn’t carbon neutral. Everything has trade-offs. For me, I will keep uploading videos of my dogs playing (turn on the sound) – primarily because I am not sure how to stop it.
In addition to sending links to classic rock songs.