Abstract: The carbon footprint of IT technologies has been a significant concern in recent years. This concern mainly focuses on the electricity consumption of data centers; many cloud suppliers commit to using 100% of renewable energy sources. However, this approach neglects the impact of device manufacturing. We consider the question of dimensioning the renewable energy sources of a geographically distributed cloud with considering the carbon impact of both the grid electricity consumption in the considered locations and the manufacturing of solar panels and batteries. We design a linear program to optimize cloud dimensioning over one year, considering worldwide locations for data centers, real-life workload traces, and solar irradiation values. Our results show a carbon footprint reduction of about 30% compared to a cloud fully supplied by solar energy and of 85% compared to the 100% grid electricity model.

Joint work with Miguel Vasconcelos (USP / LIG), Georges da Costa (IRIT), Fanny Dufossé (LIG / Inria Rhône-Alpes), Jean-Marc Nicod (FEMTO-ST), and Veronika Rehn-Sonigo (FEMTO-ST)