Save the Earth with Good Cloud Computing Practices

Today is the Earth Day 2023! Let us talk about how we can help save the Earth with some good Cloud Computing Practices. I will use Google Cloud as an example but you can apply the same ideas to AWS, Azure and Oracle Cloud.

1/ Pick the Low CO2 regions

Not all cloud regions are created equal in terms of Carbon Dioxide emissions (e.g. US Pacific Northwest region has more hydro power!). So, please choose the low CO2 regions whenever you can. e.g. in Google Cloud, you can see which is low CO2 emission easily. Often, it will cost you less too and help you save money because hydro power usually costs less than fossil fuel.

2/ Reduce Wastes

Do you have any unused projects or VMs sitting around ? It will cost you money and they all use more electricity and cooling (so more Carbon Dioxide). You can easily use Google Cloud Active Assist to help save the Earth. Google Cloud Active Assist will help in terms of cost, security, performance, reliability, manageability, and even sustainability.

3/ Choose the most energy efficient programming languages

Not all programming languages are created equal in terms of energy efficiency! Check out some of the most energy efficient programming languages at this post, "Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity?", e.g. Golang and Rust are pretty good choices when you consider all factors.

After you choose the more energy efficient programming language, you can select the corresponding runtimes or use container to run it easily, e.g. in GCP App Engine below.

I like to close this article with my favorite quote, “Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” —Carl Sagan