The Hidden Carbon Cost of the Cloud

We often talk about the environmental cost of cars, planes, trash and plastic. But we rarely talk about the environmental cost of clouds. Yes, you’ve heard it right, clouds. Not the ones in the air, but the digital ones that store our documents, pictures, and videos. The name “cloud” sounds clean and harmless, nevertheless there are huge data centres sustaining them. They are physical buildings filled with servers that consume huge amounts of energy.  

Every file we upload, picture we save or video we stream leaves a carbon footprint. Digital life feels harmless and clean, but it is not completely innocent.  

Sending one large email can produce as much CO₂ as boiling a kettle of water. Watching videos in high resolution multiplies this impact across billions of screens.  For the sake of our convenience, environmental crisis we see in traffic, industries, and households get fuelled.  

Some tech companies such as Google, Meta, and Apple are trying to go green by using renewable energy, but even “clean” data needs infrastructure, rare earth minerals, and water. The clean cloud is still not a reality. It is a part of the whole green-washing concept.   

Awareness is the first step on the way that reaches the solution.  Deleting unused files, compressing photos, and limiting high-resolution streaming may seem small, but when millions of people implement them, they matter.  

Maybe we should bring Pigouvian considerations to the digital world. Pigouvian considerations are principles behind a Pigouvian tax, which is a tax imposed on any activity that causes negative externality. Just as we tax carbon-footprint of companies, we can also tax the carbon footprint stemming from our digital presence.  

In an internship I did art Kaleseramik, I observed how carbon-taxation directed the company to start a project about producing their own solar panels. This made the porter hypothesis, a theory that suggests strict environmental regulations can encourage innovation, concrete in my mind. The same could happen in the digital world.

Just as we learned to recycle, we now need to learn to manage our digital waste.  

The cloud may be invisible, and it is understandable that this might create a fake impression that its impact is less prominent, but it isn’t.  

Every byte stored takes energy, and every gigabyte saved helps the planet.  

The future of sustainability depends on how we store.  Each year, the world’s data usage grows rapidly. In 2024, the world generated 149 zettabytes of data, and this is projected to rise to 181 zettabytes by the end of 2025. 

Behind the scenes, companies like Google and Amazon operate thousands of data centres that run all day, every day, every week, every month. These servers must be powered and cooled constantly, and it means that most of that energy still comes from non-renewable sources.  

In 2023, data centres consumed about 2% of the world’s electricity, and that number is expected to double by 2030.