How can the energy efficiency of cloud computing be further improved?
  • © Jakub Jirsák

EU-EcoCloud

Energy-efficient cloud computing technologies and policies for an eco-friendly cloud market

In the EU-EcoCloud project, the energy consumption and energy efficiency potentials of cloud computing services in the EU-28 were determined.

The digitalization of society and economy is accompanied by a significant increase in the use of cloud computing services. Applications and technologies such as video streaming, social networking, big data or artificial intelligence require significantly increasing capacities in data processing, storage and transmission.

The amount of data transmitted over the Internet is growing by about 30% annually. More and more data centers, some of them very large, are being built. New solutions in the area of industry 4.0 or autonomous driving are expected to significantly increase computing and storage capacities at the edges of the Internet in the future. In this context one speaks of Edge Computing.

Some key findings from the project:

  • In 2018, data center energy demand in the EU was approximately 76.8 TWh, up from approximately 53.9 TWh in 2010
  • This represents about 2.7 percent of the EU’s electricity consumption
  • Data center energy demand in the EU is expected to reach 92.6 TWh by 2025
  • There are extensive technologies, both hardware and software, which still offer high potential for energy efficiency in the area of cloud computing and data centers.

Furthermore, a moderated stakeholder process was used to develop recommendations for action for R&D policy, for public procurement, and for minimum requirements and quality labels for energy-efficient cloud computing.

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