UK Business Sector Asked To Participate In Overcoming Climate Change By Switching To Cloud Technology

ILLUSTRATION/Sean Pollock /Unsplash

JAKARTA - The UK business sector is being asked to immediately consider speeding up migration to their cloud storage to help tackle climate change.

It was requested by the UK government's Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which has issued a series of measures that businesses should consider to help curb their companies' carbon emissions.

By making changes to the technology they use and buy to run the company. Now that the UK government is calling on businesses across the country to support its clean-zero emissions campaign against climate change, they are also being challenged to take action to reduce their carbon footprint by 2030.

"Net-zero means you don't put more carbon into the atmosphere than you take out. Through a UN-backed government commitment process, you join an international community of thousands of like-minded businesses," the campaign announcement reads as quoted by Computer Weekly. , Monday 16 August.

And for technology purchases, BEIS said one action companies should take is to consider moving more of their on-premises IT infrastructure to the public cloud rather than continuing to store it within their own private data centers.

“Large cloud providers are generally more energy efficient than traditional enterprise data centers. That's thanks to operational and IT equipment efficiency, data center infrastructure efficiency, and higher utilization of renewable energy. So consider moving from on-premises servers to the cloud," the campaign said.

The UK government also urges IT buyers to audit the data they have stored on site, to assess whether it is worth keeping for the long term.

Tech Giants Join in Overcoming Climate Change

The top three public cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have made progress and pledged in recent years to increase the amount of renewable energy they use to power their data centers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) for example, claims that all of its operations will be powered by renewable sources by 2025, while the Google Cloud team announced its commitment to ensuring its entire global business will run on carbon-free energy by 2030.

In addition to committing to make all of its data centers powered by renewable energy by 2025, Microsoft has also pledged to build on-site hardware recycling centers at every new and existing data center site, another input from BEIS recommendations.

Government business representative Andrew Griffith said the advice issued by the BEIS was a positive step all businesses could take to help reduce their carbon emissions.

"From buying energy efficient equipment to finding a major cloud provider, these small steps collectively can make a huge difference in helping us fight climate change and create a brighter and more sustainable future," said Griffith.