2007 Koomey talk on historical costs of nuclear power in the US
Koomeyondatacenterelectricityuse v24
1. 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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2. For users, the cloud offers
infinitely scalable computing
on demand
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10. World data center electricity
use, 2000 and 2005
Source: Koomey 2008
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11. 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
13. 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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15. 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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17. 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
24. 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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25. 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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28. 2) Economies of scale:
implementing technical +
organizational changes is
cheaper and easier than for
small IT shops
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29. 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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31. Moving electrons is always
less environmentally
damaging than moving atoms
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32. 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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33. 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
34. 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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35. 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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