Reducing carbon emissions is essential for slowing down climate change.
Most people think of gas-powered cars or factories as the main contributors to pollution, but the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector is responsible for a significant portion—about 2 to 4% of the world’s carbon emissions.
This is similar to the emissions produced by the entire aviation industry.
As more devices like watches, cars, and home appliances become “smart,” ICT’s carbon emissions are expected to increase.
Experts predict that by 2030, ICT could account for 20% of global emissions.
Cloud computing, a key part of ICT, plays a big role in this carbon footprint. The emissions come from two sources: the energy used to run cloud servers (operational emissions) and the manufacturing of hardware components (embodied emissions).
Cloud companies like Microsoft and Google have committed to reducing these emissions, and a new approach might help.
A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has developed a method to design more carbon-efficient cloud servers. Led by Ph.D. student Jaylen Wang, the team created “GreenSKUs”—specialized server designs that aim to cut down on carbon emissions while still meeting performance goals.
Wang’s team introduced a systematic process called GSF (Green Server Framework), which helps cloud providers choose server designs that are both carbon-efficient and effective.
This framework was tested on Microsoft Azure, one of the largest cloud platforms. By using GSF, Azure was able to reduce its carbon emissions by about 10%. If applied globally, this reduction could lower the world’s carbon emissions by 0.1% to 0.2% by 2030.
One of the exciting parts of this research is that it also looks at ways to reduce waste from planned obsolescence—the idea that products like smartphones become outdated quickly and are replaced, creating more ICT waste.
The team found ways to reuse old components in cloud servers, extending their lifespan and reducing the need for new hardware.
While the GSF framework was first tested with Microsoft, the researchers believe it could be used by other cloud companies in the future, helping to make cloud computing greener across the entire industry.
Source: Carnegie Mellon University.
