Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have come up with a model designed to show the full extent of cloud’s energy efficiency.

The report, put together by a research team comprising McCormick School of Engineering Northwestern University and Lawrence Berkeley and part funded by Google, unveils the CLEER (Cloud Enery and Emissions Research) model, described as the ‘first ever open-access, fully transparent systems model for energy analysis of cloud systems by the research community’.

What’s more, the model predicts an 87% reduction in primary energy use if companies moved their business software – comprising CRM, productivity and email tools – to the cloud.

The report rightly notes that not all modelling attempts are 100% accurate, but adds: “Despite uncertainties, the energy savings potential of cloud-based software is likely to be substantial on a national scale given the vast differences between the energy efficiencies of local and cloud data centres …