The Cloud is a Data Centre

Understanding the Energy Impacts of Digital Living

A DIGITALEUROPE Breakfast Workshop
Part of EUSEW (EU Sustainable Energy Week)

This session on 15 June 2016 will explain the impacts that our daily online activities have on the energy consumed by our core digital infrastructure. The energy impacts of booking a train journey online, using an app to navigate or sharing photographs on social media are not always obvious. The Digital Agenda and associated policies will also be enabled by the same infrastructure. Although more and more of this digital activity is being hosted and managed in the cloud, that “cloud” is a physical entity: servers in a data centre. The session will explore these connections and interdependencies.

Objectives of the session
To explain the indirect energy impacts of our everyday actions and how they might evolve.

How will the session work?
This will be a moderated session including four different viewpoints: sector association, an individual data centre operator/cloud provider, a carbon analyst and an NGO. Each will give a short overview but the majority of the session will be Q&A.

Who should attend?
This is an open session. It should be particularly relevant for policymakers (Commission officials, MEP assistants), green and consumer NGO representatives, user industry associations, company representatives, think tanks and journalists

Agenda
1. Moderator’s welcome and introduction: Peter Judge, Global Editor, DataCenterDynamics
Welcome, objectives of the session, introductions

2. Perspectives:
a. Sector level perspective: Emma Fryer, Associate Director, techUK
b. Operator perspective: Steve Strutt, Cloud Advisor, IBM
c. NGO perspective: Andrew Hatton, Greenpeace
d. Independent Carbon analyst view: Andie Stephens, Senior Consultant, Carbon Trust

3. Moderated discussion

4. Conclusions and next steps
Wrap up, links to relevant content and next steps