Conserve Energy and Water: Think Twice Before Uploading to the Cloud

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Did you know that 2% [1] of the total energy consumed in the U.S. is by data centers? 



That’s right! In 2014 that equated to 70 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, which equals the same amount of energy used that year by 6.4 million American homes.[2] The expectation is that energy use will continue to raise at a rate of 4% per year between now and 2020.[3] That means by 2020 data centers will use 73 billion kWh.

That is why before you upload that cute picture of your cat to Facebook or upload your photo album to “the cloud”, you should think twice about the importance of sharing and preserving your photographs compared to the vast quantity of resources used to preserve your memories.


Do you know how much water is used by data centers?

On average, for every kilowatt hour, a data center uses 1.8 liters of water, which in 2014 equaled 626 billion liters of water.[4] Most of the water used by data centers is from the generation of electricity with a small portion being consumed onsite. The onsite consumption of water is from the cooling of the data centers. Each kilowatt hour used to cool a data center, on average, uses 0.48 gallons of water.[5]

Interesting Facts: 
* Global bitcoin activity = 0.7% of US energy use in 2017

* One cryptocurrency uses 1.13 billion gallons of freshwater per day 
(That equals 411 billion gallons per year).[6]



The Take Away

Cloud-based storage = excessive energy consumption

Each piece of data we upload to the internet goes to a data center where large amounts of water and electricity are used to cool and power the center. The demand for and amount of energy and water consumed by data centers is growing because of the growth in the use of cloud based technologies.

So before you upload your data, consider the impact on the environment!


References
[1, 2] Sverdlik, Yevgeniy. 2016. Here’s how much energy all US data centers consume. Data Center Knowledge. https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2016/06/27/heres-how-much-energy-all-us-data-centers-consume

[3] Shehabi, A. et al. 2016. United States data center energy usage report. Energy Technologies Area, Berkeley Lab.  https://eta.lbl.gov/publications/united-states-data-center-energy

[4] Sverdlik, Yevgeniy. 2016. Here’s how much water all US data centers consume. Data Center Knowledge. https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2016/07/12/heres-how-much-water-all-us-data-centers-consume

[5, 6] Grace Communications Foundation. 2018. Data Centers, Digital and Water Use. Water Footprint Calculator. https://www.watercalculator.org/water-use/data-centers-water-use/

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