The growing internet carbon footprint

Which “essential” of modern living – excluding real essentials such as clean water, sanitation, hospitals, food, clothing etc – would you be least willing to do without? The car? The dishwasher? The mobile phone? The cheap flight? The internet?

I think many of us would be left abject and bereft if the internet was somehow taken from us. So, we should have a genuine sense of dread and fear today that some internet bigwigs are being quoted as saying a “perfect storm” is now threatening the very future of the internet.

Outstripping available energy supplies

The problem, it seems, is that the internet is so successful that, like some kind of Malthusian vision of hell, it could soon implode in on itself, having outstripped all available energy supplies.

“In an energy-constrained world, we cannot continue to grow the footprint of the internet … we need to rein in the energy consumption.” Subodh Bapat, Sun Microsystems

The carbon footprint of the internet is growing exponentially. A report says that the internet is now “leapfrogging other sectors like the airline industry that are more widely known for their negative environmental impact”.

One study by Rich Brown, an energy analyst at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California, commissioned by the US environmental protection agency, suggested that US data centres used 61bn kilowatt hours of energy in 2006 – 1.5% of the entire electricity usage of the US.

Carbon footprint of a Google search

Earlier this year, Google caused quite a stir when it revealed that the carbon footprint of the average Google search was 0.2 grams of carbon dioxide. The amount sounds trivial until you learn that more than 200m Google searches are made every day globally.

Google is now even considering floating its energy-hungry data centres out at sea so that it can use wave and tidal power to provide the electricity needed to run the servers and sea water to help keep them cool. But can such innovations keep up with growing demand?

Might we now have to ration our use of the internet to ensure its very survival? If so, what would be considering a fair share of the internet? Thirty minutes of browsing a day per person? Fifty megs of download a day?

Paying for the privilege

Just as we are being asked to “do our bit” for the environment by flying less, using public transport more, eating less meat and the like, might we now be asked to download fewer bulging multimedia files? Or pay more for the privilege once we pass our rationed threshold?

So, if you want the internet – and humanity itself no less – to survive, you can do your bit by not posting a comment below. If, however, you want to see the flames of environmental fury tear across the surface of our planet, then post away. But on your head be it.

From The Guardian

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