The internet: never mind the emissions, just look at those savings
The recent furore over the , with particular focus on the , has led to calls for limits.
As Subodh Bapat of Sun Microsystems told the Guardian: 'In an energy-constrained world, we cannot continue to grow the footprint of the internet ... we need to rein in the energy consumption.'
. If you consider that 'scientists estimate that the energy footprint of the net is growing by more than 10% each year' and that only 1.5 billion of a potential 6.8 billion people are online, things look serious.
Apparently the internet already has a bigger footprint than the perennial benchmark of climate horror, the airline industry. The '' looks set to be the next big story.
But what we actually have here is two stories. The first is about money. Many web companies are being squeezed as the cost of power goes up and the global recession hurts profits, while at the same time usage increases. This is why you have luminaries from the likes of Google, Sun and Microsoft suggesting it might be a good idea to develop more energy efficient machines.
The second story is about climate impact. Yes, a lot of people are using the web and a lot more will in future. But the flip side of this is the carbon-intensive activity increased web usage is replacing.
For example: successful e-commerce is premised on the hyper-efficient distribution of goods, daily replacing millions of individual journeys to real-world stores with coordinated delivery networks; email communication, VOIP and video-conferencing daily replaces the need to put millions of people in the same physical space; the increasing availability of information and products in wholly digital formats replaces the need for printed materials, packing, distribution, bricks and mortar and sales staff.
So, yes, more efficient servers would be a good idea. But until someone has done the detailed research into the carbon emissions the internet is preventing, it's probably best not to turn it into green demon just yet.
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