The Forces of Green Attack Cloud Computing
Greenpeace is worried that the huge new cloud computing industry will rely on old sources of energy. The growth and size of these IT infrastructures in not only large, it is growing as fast as that of any major industry that…
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By making better energy choices and demanding more from utility vendors, cloud companies have the opportunity to be a catalyst in driving utilities and governments toward the development of cleaner electricity generation that will ensure a truly green cloud for their long-term sustainability — and a greener grid for us all.
Greenpeace has even given green energy grades to the major tech companies. Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) get poor grades. Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) get good ones as they press vendors for more use of renewable energy.
What the report neglects to mention is that almost all of the firms it analyzes are public companies. They have obligations to shareholders to keep gross margins high. This obligation effects employment levels. Companies with low margins are usually more prone to lower staff levels to make up for profit shortfalls. More expensive energy, even if it benefits the long-term health of the environment, will have to be, in almost all cases, a secondary consideration to financial ones. In other words, Greenpeace has asked may of these IT companies to act against their own self-interests.
Perhaps the Greenpeace goal is a noble one. The grades it has given these companies might shame some into putting more of their cloud servers on grids that rely to a some extent on the use of renewable energy. But the national grid does not run on renewables. It relies primarily on coal, other fossil fuels and, to some extent, hydroelectric power. Companies that need to make profits will not go far to change that if it costs them money.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
