Environmental Challenges to Cloud Computing Cloud computing has been popularly considered to be environment-friendly. In fact, I had written an article along those lines, although I had expressed some skepticism on the extravagant claims being made on this issue (See: How Green Is Cloud Computing?). However, a recent report by environment watchdog Greenpeace does raise some questions the industry will have to answer. According to this report, provocatively titled “How dirty is your data? A Look at the Energy Choices That Power Cloud Computing”, the data centers that power cloud computing account for about 2% of global energy demand and






