CYCLING TO THE CLOUD, OR REDUCING OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT EVEN FURTHER WITH HOSTERSI

For people who are active in outdoor sports such as road cycling, cross-country running or mountain biking, the ability to get out of the car, get out of the crowded and polluted city and travel miles on their feet, or on muscle-powered equipment, is an absolutely basic need. Many such people use bicycles or legs also in cities, preferring this kind of transport to standing in traffic jams and searching for parking places. Probably not many of these people think about the fact that their daily routine or workout contributes to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, while according to a study described in the pages of the journal “Global Environmental Change”, choosing an active way to move can reduce individual CO2 emissions from transport by up to a quarter! Researchers have shown that people who switch from cars to bikes for just one trip a day will reduce their annual carbon footprint by around 0.5 tonnes, a significant proportion of average per capita CO2 emissions.

Of course, you can go further, as we have already written in our announcement and at the coverage of the tour in this year's edition of the Race Around Poland we are trying to put as much emphasis as possible on promoting solutions which contribute to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. 

Riding a bicycle instead of a car and choosing an electric car instead of a petrol one are not, however, all we can do to reduce our carbon footprint.

Apart from getting into the habit of switching off unused electrical appliances, removing chargers from sockets and applying for subsidies for PV installation, significant effects can also be achieved in other areas, which are less widely discussed. Not many people know that according to research conducted by 451 Research, a company belonging to the global giant - S&P Global, which was accessed by our Technology Partner, moving the IT infrastructure of our company to the cloud computing can reduce the carbon footprint of the company by as much as 88% in the case of migration to the Amazon Web Services cloud, and even 93% in the case of a similar technology offered by Microsoft Azure! These results are, of course, due to the very high efficiency of the cloud (3.6 times higher than local servers) and the fact that, according to research, the capacity of the average local server is used on average 18%. But that is not all. As Hostersi writes: "Google Cloud Platform declared its carbon neutrality as early as 2007 and committed, by 2030, to using only CO2-free energy in its data centres worldwide. Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services clouds have made similar commitments. Microsoft Azure data centres are to be powered by 100% renewable energy by 2025. The platform has also pledged that 5 years later it will return more water to the environment than it uses for its own consumption, and in expanding its infrastructure it will not cut down a single tree." Global industry leader AWS has additionally pledged to be fully carbon neutral by 2030 while increasing the efficiency of its infrastructure. According to the giant's declaration, this efficiency is expected to allow corporate, local, data centres migrating to the cloud to reduce CO2 emissions by 400-1000 tonnes!

In addition to the obvious ecological aspect, the cloud also has many other advantages, which specialists should tell you about. You can also easily find relevant material on the web. If necessary, our Hostersi Partners will help you develop a cloud migration strategy taking into account your needs, cost analysis, data access and security. They will also help to choose the right set of cloud services to ensure maximum efficiency of the proposed and implemented solution.

On the route of this year's edition of the Race Around Poland there will be plenty of clouds, as well as great views - we are glad that carbon dioxide emission reduction experts are coming with us!