Energy Use From Wireless Networks Will Dwarf Data Center Use By 2015

angry tapir writes "New research (PDF) from an Australian university argues that increased carbon emissions from powering data centers aren't the biggest environmental threat from the growth of cloud computing. Instead, the problem is the Wi-Fi and cellular networks increasingly used to access cloud services. By 2015, the energy used to run data centers will be a 'drop in the ocean' compared to the energy used to power wireless access to services. By 2015 the energy consumption associated with 'wireless cloud' will reach 43 terawatt-hours, compared to 9.2 terawatt-hours in 2012 (an increase in carbon footprint from 6 megatons of CO_2 in 2012, up to 30 megatons of CO_2 in 2015). Data centers will comprise only 9 per cent on this increased energy consumption, compared to up to 90 per cent for wireless access."

Comments

TFA

[AmiMoJo]

The amazing article doesn't say exactly what the "wireless cloud" is. Wifi, perhaps, or do they just mean ramping up mobile phone networks adding capacity and transmitters?

Naturally they didn't bother to compare the power consumption of wireless to having multiple wired connections to everything. Wireless devices themselves tend to use less power than desktop PCs so probably more than offset the energy required for transmission of data.

It also uses the often heard but stupid reasoning that A is bad, but B is far worse so A isn't so bad any more.

Scarce details

[ThomasBHardy]

The article has very little detail in it.

It really sounded like they took the curve of data center power reduction and forecast it out, then took the amount of energy used by every corporate and home wireless device in the country(world?) and every cellular network (and it's devices) and projected them out.

Apples and oranges.

It also sounds like they felt a dire need to stick "Cloud" into the article for no other point than to raise the headline value. The article did nothing at all to convince me that their predictions really relate to cloud computing any more than anything else.