Sustainable IT: how cloud technology is helping combat climate change

Our planet is in crisis. Every day we hear stories of how global warming is destroying homes, lives, and communities. Growing public awareness of the climate disaster, changing consumer attitudes, tough government mandates, and shareholder opinions are all driving companies to put sustainability at the heart of their business strategy. To meet these goals, an excellent place to start for any organisation is reviewing the carbon emissions of its IT infrastructure. 

Data is now at the centre of everything we do. Every time we search on Google, watch Netflix, or send a message on WhatsApp, a data centre consumes energy. As a result, the increased use of technology has become one of the main contributors to climate change. Fortunately, we now have access to cloud technology. Cloud gives us data storage and processing tools that are not only more cost-efficient than traditional on-premises datacentres, but they are much better for the environment. Here are some of the ways cloud technology can help us combat climate change: 

It’s an elastic resource 

Cloud has elastic properties. In other words, it can instantly expand and contract according to an organisation’s needs. For example, if a business needs more compute power to support Black Friday sales, it just adds extra cloud capacity. When the sale ends, an organisation can scale back again with automation. Less usage means less power consumption, lower costs, and lower carbon emissions.  

The problem of rightsizing 

Anyone who works in IT can tell you that we techies are notoriously bad at rightsizing. When building a platform, it can be difficult to predict how much processing power you’ll need in the future, and nobody wants to be caught short. Traditionally, we have tended to overprovision by ordering the highest specifications for a server even though with refactoring we might only use a fraction of it to run our service. With the cloud, it’s much easier to assess your needs and reduce the compute over time once you know your actual consumption.  

Pool resources and avoid duplication 

Migrating to the cloud enables organisations to pool resources and avoid duplicating expensive data centres, reducing their collective energy consumption and carbon emissions. Using one central provider also cuts down on shipping logistics—instead of shipping parts around the world to build multiple data centres, everything goes to fewer destinations.  

Access economies of scale 

All major cloud vendors are switching to greener energy sources and working hard to achieve net-zero emissions. With access to funds and resources most organisations can only dream of, these behemoths will always be at the forefront of IT sustainability innovation. Cloud customers can benefit from large-scale environmental projects, such as Microsoft’s ‘geoexchange’ initiative, which in turn boosts their own sustainability credentials.  

Minimise waste 

Our reliance on technology has led to some bad habits. People often forget or are afraid to switch computers off, which means the computers continue to consume energy even when nobody’s using them. Cloud computing solves that problem as you can set your platforms to turn on and off at a particular time or in response to a trigger. Like a home security light timer, your systems could switch on at 7 am ready for the first user at 8 am, which is handy for organisations that need more flexibility.   

Ongoing carbon impact monitoring 

Once you’re in the cloud, you can often use vendor tools to monitor the carbon impact of using their services and spot opportunities to further reduce emissions. For example, Microsoft’s Emissions Impact Dashboard helps customers track and reduce carbon emissions generated by their usage of cloud services.  

Our customers are often surprised by how quickly they can migrate to the cloud. In just a few months, you can significantly reduce your environmental impact. However, it’s important to get it right. Too often, we see companies ‘lift and shift’ their infrastructure to the cloud without following best practice and fail to capitalise on the cloud’s elastic capabilities. That’s why we make it our mission to support our customers in building sustainable infrastructure that benefits their organisation and the planet.  

As part of this mission, we’ve also developed our Cloud Carbon Reduction Calculator that helps organisations estimate their current emissions and compare them to what they could be if they migrated to the cloud. Our calculations show that potential carbon emission reductions could be as high as 92% when moving to the cloud.  

At Kainos, you’ll find passionate sustainability advocates at every level throughout our company. We achieved carbon neutrality in 2021 and are committed to reaching carbon net-zero by 2025. We want to be clear: we don’t see sustainability as a business opportunity. As cloud experts, we believe it is our responsibility to help our customers take urgent action to minimise our collective carbon emissions.

The day of reckoning is upon us. Regulation is inevitable, and it’s likely that the longer you wait, the more expensive it will be to comply. Also bear in mind that the costs of carbon offsetting are predicted to rise tenfold by 2030, so it makes economic and environmental sense to build sustainability into your infrastructure. There is no greater disaster facing humanity than climate change, and we need to act now if we want to preserve our world for future generations. 

If you’d like to find out how Kainos can accelerate your journey to sustainability through technology, contact us today.