It was argued once that the Palm Pilot, accessing a wireless network, would consume as much energy in a year as a regrigerator. It was also predicted by many that the internet itself would create such a deman for electricity that it would supercede the use of a small country. These people were all wrong. Still, in the terms of “green” consciousness, where does this, or your own blog stand? Slate:
Jonathan Koomey, the energy researcher who challenged the Palm Pilot theory, has now estimated how much energy it takes for one gigabyte of data to travel over the Internet. Along with another consultant named Cody Taylor, Koomey added up the electricity needed to run the servers hosting the data, the Internet backbone over which those data travel, and the network connections through which the data flow. (Their numbers don’t include the energy used by end-user equipment—like home computers and wireless routers.) In total, they estimate that in 2006, it took, on average, between nine and 16 kWh of electricity to transmit a gigabyte of data. (Koomey and Taylor’s research—published here [PDF]—was sponsored by an online-advertising firm.)
What does that mean for your personal blog? In terms of direct pollution, the impact is likely to be pretty small. To provide a reference point, the popular blogging site WordPress said it transferred about 161,100 gigabytes of data last year across 3,132,606 active blogs. Do the math, and that adds up to only about 51 megabytes of data transferred per blog per year—a tiny amount. Of course, a given blogger’s bandwidth will be much higher if he or she receives lots of traffic or posts large images and videos. But even those whose sites transfer a couple of gigabytes a month would be responsible for just a few hundred kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. Using somewhat outdated stats from the Department of Energy, that would put even one of those larger blogs somewhere in the range of the average household’s microwave.
So stewardship wary bloggers, you can sleep well at night.
On a more serious note, reading this article kicked off a bout of research – too incomplete to post about yet – into just how much energy the internet actually conserves opposed to what it uses. The reduction in driving, paper usage, and airline travel is astronomical (a surprise even to an obsessively connected geek like myself), and comparisons of energy usage in this Slate article (downloading an MP3 vs. purchasing a cd in person) are just the tip of the (melting) iceberg.
More on that later.
Also, looking someone up on Facebook uses less energy than driving to their house and peeking in their window. In addition, using match.com uses less energy than driving to the bars.
Good point, Craig. But you just can’t get that same surprised look without the window peeking. Just ask Jeffe.
Hi Jason! Nice article!
By the way, we are working on NaturCert+, which is our very own blog where we share our news and articles, and where visitors have the opportunity to share their activities and ideas with the rest of the world.
Our aim for NaturCert+, is to develop a public platform that will address a variety of issues related to responsible and/or sustainable travel & tourism and become a daily reading resource for a broad spectrum of visitors.
We aim to give the opportunity to bloggers to contribute and share their content relevant to responsible and/or sustainable travel & tourism on our blog and gain new readers and followers, more visibility and publicity, as well as better promotion while generating added value for the submitted content.
Please contact us on plus@naturcert.com if you are interested.