Gartner notes that migrating to the cloud can actually have a positive impact on greenhouse gas emissions, although the impact is not always the same.

Is the cloud better for the environment than an on-premises data center? Generally yes, according to Gartner. Overall, choosing cloud storage can reduce the cost of greenhouse gas emissions by 70 to 90 percent compared to traditional on-premises data centers. The necessary reservations are required immediately. After all, it’s not as if there’s a huge positive impact immediately after a cloud migration.

Much depends on the region in which an on-premises data center is located. Gartner notes that gains are greatest in regions where coal and fossil fuels are an important part of the energy mix. This immediately means that emission reduction from cloud migration in our country will be rather limited.

energy mix

Elia points out that Belgian energy is mainly generated by nuclear power plants. These accounted for around 47.3 percent of total production in 2022. Renewable energy, including onshore and offshore wind turbines and solar panels, accounted for another 19.8 percent. This means that more than 67 percent of Belgian energy production is almost CO2-free.

The gap will be filled with gas, which has lower CO2 emissions than coal. The transport of gas is accompanied by huge methane leaks, and methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas. Recent studies therefore show that generating electricity from gas is not always much better than generating electricity from coal.

PUE is the key

In this sense, we can also gain something by moving computing power and storage to the cloud. The benefits of this migration have to do with efficiency. Hyperscalers like Microsoft and Google strive for the highest possible energy consumption effectiveness (PUE). This value indicates how much energy is actually used to operate the IT hardware compared to the energy required for cooling.

Hyperscaler data centers today have an average PUE of 1.17. In 2017 there were two more. In other words, the sites are pretty efficient. In addition, the hardware in hyperscaler data centers is usually much newer and therefore more efficient. Gartner notes that servers in an on-premises context are rarely updated within five years, while cloud providers have update cycles of three to five years.

Dirtier energy, bigger impact

Newer and more efficient hardware, combined with significantly more efficient cooling, means that the same workload under a cloud provider’s roof uses less energy than in a company’s basement. In Belgium, more than 30 percent of the electricity consumed is associated with CO2 emissions, so this increase in efficiency has a direct impact on the greenhouse gases released.

In Germany, for example, the impact of a cloud migration is much greater. Our neighboring country has a rather polluting energy mix with 17.2 percent renewable energy and almost 3.2 percent nuclear power generation. Oil and gas make up 59 percent, hard coal and lignite another 19.8 percent of the mix. The same migration in our German neighbors therefore has a greater positive impact on total greenhouse gas emissions than in our country, although a German workload is generally more polluting than a Belgian one.