Google released today a study on Green Computing which proves that using cloud-based email is more energy efficient than running email in-house. The case study compares the energy savings and carbon footprint of using Gmail via Google Apps – Google’s cloud-based messaging and collaboration suite, versus housing local servers to manage the same email.

In this study Google calculates the average amount of energy necessary to run email in-house at a small, medium and large size businesses, and assumes that the small and medium businesses would require 2 servers, and large companies would require 12 servers.

Google concludes in the study that Gmail has proven that the cloud can deliver a high-quality, reliable, and useful service at a much lower energy cost than other methods.

As more and more services move to the cloud including Email, movies, music, television and Telephone; efficient hardware, software, and server provisioning will continue to show that cloud is the most energy efficient platform for delivering computing.