The Energy Efficiency Potential of Cloud-Based Software: A U.S. Case Study

Technical Report · Mon Jun 03 04:00:00 EDT 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1171159· OSTI ID:1171159

Masanet, Eric ^[1]; Shehabi, Arman ^[2]; Liang, Jiaqi ^[1]; Ramakrishnan, Lavanya ^[2]; Ma, XiaoHui ^[1]; Hendrix, Valerie ^[2]; Walker, Benjamin ^[1]; Mantha, Pradeep ^[2]

---

1. Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL (United States)
2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

The energy use of data centers is a topic that has received much attention, given that data centers currently account for 1-2% of global electricity use. However, cloud computing holds great potential to reduce data center energy demand moving forward, due to both large reductions in total servers through consolidation and large increases in facility efficiencies compared to traditional local data centers. However, analyzing the net energy implications of shifts to the cloud can be very difficult, because data center services can affect many different components of society’s economic and energy systems.

• Research Organization: Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-05CH11231
• OSTI ID: 1171159
• Report Number(s): LBNL-6298E
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY