Will the Cloud’s Efficiency Cut Energy (and Coal) Use?
"…while its financial benefits have been widely discussed, the shift in energy usage in a cloud computing model has received little attention."
U.S. can become an energy export nation
Politico, 7/25/12 Imagine a future in which the United States abandons its tepid policy of inching toward energy “independence” and instead joins forces with Canada and Mexico to become the world’s largest energy exporter.
The Power Behind Big Data: A Global Survey
The post-2008 global recession didn’t significantly slow global data center construction. What happens when robust economic growth returns? The rise of new Web-based services, feature-laden smart-phones and tablets, aps and video-everywhere, all end up visible in the rise in demand for data centers.
China, The Cloud & Coal
China is likely to emerge as world’s best cloud computing infrastructure… [the] Chinese government has cited cloud computing as a Strategic Emerging Industry.
“Like” a “Friend” & Burn Some Coal
EnergyFactsWeekly — The Cloud Begins With Coal Facebook’s new 300,000 square-foot data center, now operating in Forest City, North Carolina, took 16 months and 1.2 million labor-hours of construction, and …. This Facebook facility will require electricity from about one million tons of coal over the next decade
The “New Economy”: Transistors, Electrons and Coal
EnergyFactsWeekly — The Cloud Begins With Coal We know three things about transistors: They have already changed the world: Silicon technology progress is not over, and vast domains of untapped social and economic opportunity remain: Every single transistor consumes electricity. And we know two other related facts: The energy cost of computation has collapsed, but the overall amount of…