How Green Is the Cloud?

The Carbon Disclosure Project says in its Cloud Computing - The IT Solution for the 21st Century that large companies in the U.K. plan to accelerate their adoption of cloud computing from 10% to about 70% of their IT spend by 2020, attracted by the clear bottom-line benefits on IT and energy. However cloud computing is as well now being recognized for going beyond the bottom line — by reducing as much carbon emissions as removing four million passenger vehicles in that same timeframe.

The results of the CDP study are said to echo a 2010 report commissioned by Microsoft, Cloud Computing and Sustainability: The Environmental Benefits of Moving to the Cloud, which was conducted by Accenture and WSP Environment & Energy.

Apple, for one, is building "the nation's largest end-user-owned, onsite solar array" at its Maiden, North Carolina, data center, Wired Enterprise’s Caleb Garling reported last month. The Maiden facility is home to the company's iCloud service, which just passed 100 million users, Garling writes. And the facility is expected to take on a bit more heavy lifting with the introduction of iCloud-friendly OS X Mountain Lion.