by Barbara Geltosky

NAL National Vice Chair Energy Sources

November 14, 2014       

Most of us use the internet daily, but without a true idea of how much energy we are using when we do a Google search, make a call on our cell phone or stream something on Apple TV. Surprisingly, a small smart phone can use as much energy as a refrigerator! [i]As we try to be mindful of our energy use, especially in light of the latest and most disheartening report from the International Panel on Climate Change (yes, it has been scientifically proven that climate change is caused by humans!), it is important to realize how much power we use with these ubiquitous devices, especially when we store data wirelessly on the Cloud. The IPC says, ”Human influence on the climate system is clear and growing, with impacts observed on all continents. If left unchecked, climate change will increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.”[ii] If our accessing Cloud services, through webmail, social networks and Apps ,continues to grow, this too will have an ever increasing effect on our carbon footprint.

A number of factors have driven the growth of the Cloud usage, including outsourcing of IT functions to data centers, and the exponential growth of social media such as Twitter, and Facebook. The Internet is likely responsible for 3% of US energy consumption. Did you know that the energy used by a single Google search is equivalent to turning on a 60W light bulb for 17 seconds? [iii]Now consider that people conduct over 1 billion searches a day, and you’ve got a massive energy footprint of roughly 12.5 million watts – and that’s just a fraction of the search giant’s 260 million watt total. The average energy consumption of a typical user is the rough equivalent to running a 60- watt light bulb for three hours. Studies found that Yahoo mail house- holds use 11% more electricity than Google households-equal to the entire annual electricity consumption of Barbados.

Tens of thousands of data centers exist to support this explosion of digital information. A study by the New York Times found that a single data center uses more power than a medium sized town, with the power used worldwide equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants! Because online companies run their data centers around the clock, they may waste 90% of the energy they take from the grid, while servers are kept idling. Because backup power may be needed, data centers also run generators with polluting diesel exhaust; numerous Silicon Valley centers are listed on the California’s Toxic Air Contaminant Inventory. “When you factor in cooling systems and backup batteries, energy wasted is about 30 times the amount of electricity used to carry out the basic purpose of the data center. It is absolutely a race between our ability to create data and our ability to store and manage data,” said Jeremy Burton, a data storage expert. [iv]

Given that the world is trying to reduce carbon emissions, how data centers are powered and cooled is becoming increasingly important. Analysts warn that companies who do not adapt may face a shakeup, so the trend toward green energy sourcing is increasing. Data centers can be located in areas where there is renewable power, such as one installation, Green Qloud, situated near Seattle, which gets 95% of its energy from hydropower. Surprisingly, due to investments in green power, renewable energy, and carbon offsets, Google’s carbon footprint is actually considered a net zero. Technology is also being developed so that data centers can safely power down servers when not in use. Another possibility, using the Cloud, is using centralized data centers with servers employing a technique called virtualization, which allows servers to merge their identities using flexible computing resources. [v]

However, data centers are not the only energy hogs, and may become a smaller fraction of the problem in the not so distant future. Wireless networks used to access cloud services will soon consume up to 90% of the energy used to power the cloud ecosystem. And the energy use of the cloud is expected to grow up to 460%, in just the next three years, which is the equivalent of 4.9 million extra cars on the road in terms of carbon footprint. Obviously, there is a need for these technologies to be made more efficient, and quickly. [vi]

Ironically, as we try to save more trees, moving from paper to digital storage is leading to major increases in energy consumption. But just how much energy are we using up by not keeping our inboxes in order? It is difficult to calculate this accurately, but in the end, less data equals less energy- so deleting some of those 5,000 emails in your inbox is a start! [vii]

*****

[i] Walsh, Bryan, “The surprisingly large energy footprint of the Digital Economy”, August 14,2013, Time

[ii] IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2014, November 2014

[iii] Chino, Mike, ”How much energy does Google use?” June 06, 2014, Raconteur

[iv] Glanz, James, “Power, Pollution and the Internet” September 22, 2012, New York Times

[v] Webb, Flemmich,”Cleaning the Cloud to Reduce Environmental Impact, July 22, 2014, Raconteur

[vi] “Massive cost hidden in wireless cloud boom”, April 11, 2013, Phys.org

[vii] Grover, Sami, ”The footprint of Gmail: How much energy would deleting email save?”

February 17, 2008, Treehugger.org