A recent post on the Google Green Blog has revealed that the US General Services Administration saved $285,000 in energy consumption after switching to cloud based apps.

Even though most IT decision makers would freely want to admit they’re doing their bit for the environment by migrating to the cloud, the most prominent reason companies migrate would be convenience and, above all, money.

But Google claims the cloud is more energy efficient than people think, and Urs Hoelzle, Google senior vice president for technical infrastructure, explains why.

The reason moving to the cloud would be both cost and energy efficient, Hoelzle notes, is that servers’ energy is vastly reduced. As the cloud-based solution has fewer servers at better optimisation, the energy levels are decreased.

Google found that, using Google Apps, organisations could decrease their energy costs by anything from 65% to 85% on average.

But what energy sources …