Dark Clouds - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 131

Over the long run, these rates of electrical consumption are less than
sustainable, and companies are actively trying to ind solutions. But this
is not easy because data centers are proit-making enterprises that keep
customers by maintaining 24/7 access. Moreover, their systems need
more than just a constant supply of power to operate. They also need a
means of maintaining a suficiently cool environment to prevent their
servers from overheating. It should therefore come as little surprise that
the coal industry expects a revenue bonanza from cloud computing. In
a detailed report, the association representing Big Coal in the United
States contradicts all the forecasts that cloud computing will eventually
diminish energy requirements for companies that use the cloud and for
the cloud industry itself (Mills 2013).
Companies can do some things to moderate power consumption,
including locating their facilities in places like Scandinavia and Canada that
provide better natural cooling. But, as the section on security issues shows,
storing data outside one's borders raises other concerns. Companies can
also better attune their power systems to times when servers are actively
engaged in processing. But this is dificult to accomplish because cloud
providers like to keep the power lowing so that, in the event of a sudden
spike in processing demand, their servers do not crash. Cloud companies
know that customers do not like to see any delay or down time in their
email use, in digital product downloads, or in access to social-media sites,
and they worry that customers will turn to another provider or lose interest
and cut back on their discretionary activities in cyberspace. Nevertheless,
some irms are taking action.
HP has developed new servers that require less power, an initiative that
has helped its bottom line even as it earns less than it used to on all of its
other lines of business (Sherr and Clark 2013). Companies are also devel-
oping innovative power systems to substantially reduce, if not eliminate,
the need to cool servers electrically. 2 Yahoo! made the decision to build
a data center outside Buffalo, New York, that uses hydroelectric power,
which substantially lowered its carbon footprint (Greenpeace International
2010, 3). Although Google killed its thermal power program, the company
has used wind power for a data center in Iowa and set up an electricity
subsidiary to sell power back to the grid (Barton 2012). Especially since
it suffered a barrage of negative publicity for locating one of the largest
data centers in North Carolina and choosing to deal with a company,