UK Gov: businesses should migrate to the Cloud to fight climate change

 

The impact of climate change is all around us. Wildfires in Greece, flooding in Germany and here in the UK, extreme weather ranging from record-making heat waves to torrential rainfall.  

Striving for sustainability has to become a major priority for us all, including businesses, to fight these changes.

This is not something lost on the UK government. Their Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is advising businesses to follow a series of steps to curb their carbon emissions and overall environmental impact.

One of these steps is for businesses to accelerate the pace of their Cloud migrations to help tackle climate change.

This comes as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, the big three public Cloud providers have made pledges to make their operations more environmentally friendly, all seeking to increase the level of renewable energy they use to power their data centres.

The UK governmental department for Business, Energy and Industrial strategy argues that  “Large cloud providers are generally more energy-efficient than traditional enterprise data centres,” because of “IT operational and equipment efficiency, data centre infrastructure efficiency and a higher utilisation of renewable energy.”

Meaning it’s more energy efficient to move on-premise servers to the Cloud.

Another suggestion made by the department to businesses was to audit stored data to assess if it is worth keeping in the long term. By deleting obsolete or unnecessary data companies can minimise storage costs post-cloud migration.

An additional suggestion was for businesses to purchase recycled IT equipment and printers/ laptops that are certified as energy-efficient.

Electronic or E-waste has risen by 21% in the last five years, according to the UN, and is a significant contributor to climate change and environmental damage. Containing chemicals like mercury and lithium which are highly toxic and dangerous to humans, when burned they release massive amounts of CO₂, which fuels the warming of the planet.

Microsoft has been addressing waste by promising to build hardware recycling centres on-site at every new data centre site it opens.

These recommendations by the UK Government are part of a wider push to encourage businesses to ‘go green’, shrink their carbon footprints by 2030 and strive for net-zero emissions. This is encouraged through joining the BEIS backed UK Business Climate Hub initiative which challenges participants to reach these goals.

With businesses being encouraged to pursue migrating their data to the Cloud due to this, ensuring their data is adequately stored and protected in the Cloud is essential.

The pressing fight against climate change will require more businesses to make significant changes to their use of technology, meaning developing an IT strategy that will account for Cloud security is critical.