The article's observations on green IT are both right and wrong.

Yes, if you source capacity in the cloud you might increase the overall "emissions cost" of procuring a service since you don't necessarily know the carbon intensity of the fuels mix for the electricity that will power those data centres, or the thermo-electrical efficiency of their IT setup.

But the way that carbon accounting works dictates (wrongly I believe) that any emissions that exist outside an organisation's "emissions boundary" can be excluded since they are not ???owned??? by the organisation in question.

So while moving IT offsite and into the cloud will not necessarily save emissions and might actually add to them in real terms, the accountancy loophole for some larger entities for whom emissions reporting is mandatory is that they no longer have to account at all for their emissions that exist in the cloud (if you will excuse the mixed metaphor)...