86% of Gen Z’s are willing to rent out their hardware to help the Environment

It’s no secret that we’re pushing our planet to the limit; with an ocean heaving with plastic, overflowing landfills and severe pollution in our biggest cities, a movement to improve on the pollution we can see has already begun. However; what about the carbon emissions we can’t see? Data Centers are currently consuming roughly 3% of all globally generated power. This means that they are responsible for around 2% of greenhouse gas emissions — to put this in context, it’s a carbon footprint that equals the airline industry.

Cudo Ventures recently teamed up with CensusWide to explore how consumers felt about the Data Centre industry which accounts for 200 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year and how the sharing economy model can help.

Traditionally, carbon emissions in Compute are a factor of three things: the number of servers running, the total energy required to power each server, and the carbon intensity of energy sources used to power these servers. However, one thing that traditional carbon emission calculations do not factor in, is the production and recycling of the hardware.

When examining the Life Cycle Assessment — which is a quantitative analytical method used to evaluate the total environmental impact arising from production, use, and end of life phases of a product or service — one must add the production of the equipment in data centres to the full impact they have on the environment. Mining the raw materials required, the transportation of the raw materials for the hardware, the production and assembly of raw materials, the testing and packaging of the finished hardware, the shipment of the hardware to the Data Centre, and then finally, one can begin to calculate the product use impact.

Exploring the total Life Cycle Impact of a Data Centre now becomes a much larger task and in order to achieve true environmental improvement, a solution far greater than simply using renewable energy must be investigated.

How the Sharing Economy can contribute significantly to better Environmental practices within Computing

“The sharing economy is an economic model defined as a peer-to-peer (P2P) based activity of acquiring, providing, or sharing access to goods and services that is often facilitated by a community-based on-line platform.”

Some of the most popular examples of the sharing economy are Airbnb and Uber. Let’s explore Airbnb to provide a frame of reference for collaborative consumption in hardware.

Airbnb is merely a technology platform that connects the supplier (the host) and the buyer (the guest) to each other. Simple no? It is, but the impact is more complex than you think. It took the Hilton 72 years to enter 69 countries, it took Airbnb 3 years to enter 89 — that equates into 150 million users worldwide, each year. Now, in the most basic way to look at it, Airbnb has influenced three major changes.

1. Let’s assume that less hotels are being built due to lessened demand which creates less environmental impact — Airbnb hosts use the space already available to them, in other words, the environmental impact was already made

2. The Host is able to earn money from a space they already own — Airbnb has provided a safe option to monetise resources already available to them

3. The Guest is able to find a cheaper, more flexible way to travel, opening up more opportunity

“A 2018 analysis using the Cleantech model finds that when guests stay on Airbnb, significantly less energy and water are used, fewer greenhouse gases are emitted, and waste is reduced. By staying in Airbnb listings rather than hotels in 2017, Airbnb guests in Europe achieved energy savings equal to that of 826,000 homes and reduced water usage equal to 13,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Airbnb guest stays in North America resulted in lower greenhouse gas emissions equal to that of over 354,000 cars and waste reduction of 64,000 tons.” https://press.airbnb.com/how-the-airbnb-community-supports-environmentally-friendly-travel-worldwide/

So, keeping Airbnb in mind, let’s have a look at how the Sharing Economy can transform the environmental impact on Computing.

Distributed Computing — The era of sharing

Cudo Ventures created a technology platform that connects the supplier (Computer Owner) with the Buyer (Businesses and Individuals requiring more compute power) to each other. The impact, very much like Airbnb is threefold:

1. Less Data Centers need to be built (less hardware needs to be manufactured)

2. The Computer Owner can monetize the hardware which has already been paid for both in money and environmental impact

3. Businesses can buy their compute power in a highly flexible way and up to x10 more cost effective than traditional compute

In the world today there are over 2 billion PCs, 2.7 billion smartphones and 100’s of millions of gaming consoles that are inactive almost 50% of the time. The sharing economy solution is simple; utilise the spare computing power from the billions of idle electronic devices worldwide to power businesses, research and people’s everyday lives.

Matt Hawkins, CEO of Cudo Ventures: “Cloud services are an extremely powerful tool which is becoming increasingly popular. These services are expensive however, and with their expected growth they also have a big ecological impact. Distributed computing extends the cloud idea to edge and user devices, in order to reduce the need for massive server rooms and to facilitate access to these new technologies. This will not only translate into a great reduction of the cost of these services, but also on rewards to the users for contributing to the network. By securely connecting the buyers project with the seller’s IT equipment in a truly elastic way, ensures both parties benefit financially.”

But how are the general public responding to this new sharing economy platform?

In a survey of 2000 consumers carried out in July 2019, over 60% of respondents confirmed that they would be interested in renting their spare computing power, which rises to 86% for respondents aged 16–24. With just some of the cited benefits including; reducing the need for further data centres to be built (34%), funding medical research and not-for-profit organisations (42%) and providing device holders with an additional income (64%), the shift towards sharing unused computing power seems indisputable.

“1 in 4 (26%) respondents believe that the sharing economy is directly benefiting the environment. 70% of the 2,000 consumers interviewed either like or love the environmental benefits of the sharing economy.”

What do you think of the Sharing Economy and its applications? Share your comments and thoughts below.

Next week, we’ll explore the impact that the Sharing Economy and Distributed Computing have on individuals across the Globe.

If you would like to learn more about CUDOS, please visit www.cudos.org, www.cudoventures.com or www.cudocompute.com