Cloud computing is taking the IT industry by storm but behind the technology are massive data centers that consume a lot of energy. How much?

According to some of the opening stats in an infographic cooked up by ABB, a utility and industrial automation firm, the energy requirements of the world’s data centers are large enough power New York City one and a half times. The average data center sucks up enough juice to power 25,000 homes.

Sure, a cloudy future is a potentially greener future for IT. But the worry is that as the cloud grows in the near term, so will its share of the global energy consumption pie. Worse is that inefficiency will creep in and exacerbate the issue. Considering that 10 percent of the 5.75 million servers that are installed each year to grow web services go unused, it’s a well-founded concern.

Check out the rest of ABB’s infographic below. (Visit ABB for the full-sized version.)

Image credit: ABB

[via ReadWriteWeb]