Sharing Computing Power: Enhancing Energy Efficiency and Reducing Carbon Emissions

As the key driver of digital economy development, computing power can become costly due to increasing energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with IT equipment. One potential solution is to promote sustainable computility–electricity–carbon coordination by sharing access to underutilized computing resources. This article introduces energy- and carbon-aware computing power sharing, highlighting its potential to enhance energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. Precisely, this article defines computing power sharing with four pillars: participants, resources, purposes, and methods. Participants in the sharing framework shape heterogeneous computing power supply and demand features as well as energy and carbon footprints of computing resources. Feasible sharing frameworks for multilayer resources and corresponding sharing purposes, especially energy and carbon targets, are further classified. Meanwhile, various supporting methods and techniques adopted for these sharing purposes or associated issues are discussed. This article concludes with an analysis of future challenges, followed by policy recommendations.