How Green is Your Data?

That (annoying) Microsoft animated paper clip is back.  This time in human form as a reminder from Greenpeace that it takes huge amounts of electricity to run our modern online lives and it's time we asked where that electricity comes from.  Go Greenpeace.

It's not the electricity itself that is the problem -- it's the way it's generated.  If the electricity is being generated in the US, chances are most of it is made by burning fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, which is just not sustainable and causes that little giant thing you may have heard about called climate change.

So even darlings of generation progressive like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have to own up to the amount of dirty energy they consume.  I'd much rather store my data or buy stuff from a company whose cloud is clean and white rather than gray like the pall that spews out of a coal-fired plant.

It's only a matter of time before someone asks you:  'How green is your data?'

Like this:  I ride my bike, take mass transit, recycle, use reusable bags, support wind power, and enjoy the power of nature as much as possible so I don't want my online experience to be marred by dirty fossil fuels.

How green is your data?

image: adamz.co.uk