International Journal of Research Studies in Computing 2016 October, Volume 5 Number 2, 3-9 © The Author(s) / Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND A green step towards computing: Green cloud computing Garg, Preeti MIET, Meerut, India (preeti.itgarg@gmail.com) Received: 26 April 2016 Revised: 8 July 2016 Accepted: 18 July 2016 Available Online: 17 August 2016 DOI: 10.5861/ijrsc.2016.1518 ISSN: 2243-772X Online ISSN: 2243-7797 OPEN ACCESS Abstract Due to the exponential growth of internet, Cloud Computing came into existence. Cloud computing describes highly scalable computing resources supplied as an outer service through internet on pay-as-usability basis. Mobile Cloud Computing refers to an infrastructure where data processing and storage can happen away from mobile device. These both computing need large data stores to process the users request, these data stores emit a huge amount of carbon and consume a lot of power which gave birth to Green cloud computing. Green cloud computing is the new era of cloud computing. It is an effective way of cloud computing that guarantees green and pollution free environment with least energy consumption and greener environment. The objective of this paper is to explore the concept of Green Cloud Computing and why do we need green cloud and most importantly how green cloud is different from cloud computing and mobile cloud computing and how it is more advantageous than cloud computing. Here architecture of Green cloud computing is also proposed. Keywords: cloud computing; mobile cloud computing; green cloud; computing; cloud; mobile user; carbon emission