Reducing the environmental impact of human activities and adapting to climate change are major issues. Digital technology offers opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint, but it is also a sector that generates numerous environmental impacts (manufacturing of digital components, energy consumption by networks and data centers, end-of-life waste, etc.) and is a source of both direct and indirect impacts.
The cloud offers users significant computing and storage capabilities. The maturity of virtualization technologies has enabled the emergence of complex virtualized infrastructures capable of rapidly deploying and reconfiguring virtual and elastic resources within increasingly distributed infrastructures. This resource management, which is transparent to users, creates the illusion of access to unlimited resources with no energy implications...
However, the energy consumption of these clouds is very real and cause for concern, as are their overall GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions and the consumption of critical raw materials used in their production.
As climate change becomes more visible and more dramatic with each passing year, with serious consequences for people and the planet, all sectors (transportation, construction, agriculture, industry, etc.) must contribute to the effort to reduce GHG emissions.
Despite their potential to optimize processes in other sectors (transportation, energy, agriculture), Cloud computing is no exception to this rule: the upward trend in its greenhouse gas emissions must be reversed, or else its potential benefits in other sectors will be negated.
That is why the CARECloud project (Understanding, Improving, and Reducing the Environmental Impacts of Cloud Computing) aims to reduce the energy and environmental impacts of cloud infrastructure. The candidate will be hired as part of the CARECloud project, which is part of the PEPR Cloud program, funded by the ANR under the France 2030 program.
