Data centers in Virginia. and elsewhere have major carbon footprint, report says

Washington Post: Although it is hard to pinpoint how much energy cloud computing uses each year, the IT sector estimated in 2008 it represented 2 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. In 2007 data centers and mobile communications used 623 billion kilowatt hours of electricity; put another way, if the industry were a country, it would rank fifth in the world in terms of electricity demand, behind the U.S., China, Russia and Japan. "Data centers and the cloud would be an environmental win if we build...

URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/data-centers-in-va-and-elsewhere-have-major-carbon-footprint-report-says/2012/04/17/gIQAd4t3NT_story.html