Zicklin Prof Studies Environmental Impact of Cloud Computing
October 30, 2025To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, Zicklin School prof Jooho Kim has looked at “cloud” from both sides now.
Dr. Kim, an assistant professor in the Paul H. Chook Department of Information Systems and Statistics, recently published an article in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, entitled “An Empirical Investigation of Cloud Computing and Environmental Performance of Nations: Implications for Shared Responsibility in Cloud Computing.”
Using figures from the World Bank, Our World in Data, and other sources, Kim and his co-authors examined how the use of cloud computing (defined as the use of data centers that provide cloud-based services) affected environmental sustainability. They focused on two indicators: 1) energy intensity (electricity consumption per unit of Gross Domestic Product); and 2) carbon intensity (C02 emissions per unit of GDP).
After gathering data on 51 countries worldwide between 1995 and 2016, Kim and his co-authors compared countries that host data centers (called “cloud-hosting countries” in the study) to countries that use cloud services but don’t host them (called “cloud-neighboring countries”). They found that while access to cloud services can make IT operations more energy efficient, hosting cloud infrastructure increases national energy and carbon emissions. Meanwhile, the cloud-neighboring countries that use services provided by data centers benefit from the efficiency of cloud-based IT services without suffering the downsides of environmental impact.
As someone once asked in a different context, “What is to be done?” Kim and his co-authors conclude, as the title of their article indicates, that environmental responsibility should be shared. They extend a shared responsibility model. Cloud service providers could be responsible for reducing the emissions and energy intensities of their data centers, while users could be responsible for the choice of providers and types or levels of cloud application.
Kim and his co-authors admittedly don’t empirically test how responsibility should be shared, but they offer a framework for more balanced responsibility. Perhaps it will be like the children’s story “Stone Soup,” in which group generosity leads to a communal abundance that would not have been possible with selfish individualism.