The IT industry has recently come into scrutiny about its carbon footprint. As millions of users log into their Gmail, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, Twitter accounts, etc.. that’s a whole lot of energy being used and carbon produced.
We’ve learned that:
– For every two Google searches (7g of CO2 each) uses the same amount of energy as boiling the kettle for a cuppa (15g)
– A single 140 character or less tweet on Twitter is about 0.02 grams of C02
– Email spam uses 0.03grams of CO2 per message (not that you needed any possible more reasons to hate spam, but that’s another!)
– A proper email uses 4.0 grams C02 per message.
– Facebook’s carbon footprint is equivalent to the annual emissions from a million passenger cars in the US
We’ve also heard all of the stories about Google’s fleet of stacked computers in data centres, 40 racks tall! Or how about Facebook’s massive data farms in the desert?
There is no denying that the IT industry has played a role in generating carbon emissions. But for all the energy sucking, carbon producing impacts of technology, it still is part of the solution in enabling action on climate change, more so than the problem. I’ll admit tweeting what you had for dinner (especially if it was a steak) may not be the best thing for the environment but more and more products and services are developing that aim to tackle the energy intensiveness of the IT space.
Some of these include:
– Backle, aka black Google, because that white screen on Google’s homepage uses more energy than a black one.
– Ecosia – It’s an alternative search engine that gives 80% of its advertising revenue from searches to rain forest conservation projects run by the WWF. It also is run using green electricity.
– Cleanbits is a service that let’s you know what sites are using green hosting and offer alternatives to people who’d like to switch to using renewable energy as their source of energy as well as offer offset mechanics like investing in renewables and tree planting.
– There’s a whole host of green hosting companies that use renewable energy to power their servers
There is also Power Assure, an energy start-up, which is an on-demand energy efficiency management software for data centers. Facebook is one of their clients. This is a similar premise to Cloud Computing software that allows tasks to be run in parallel, dispersed between different computers, so that servers are only using what they need rather than always running. Accenture and Microsoft have claimed that cloud computing can cut carbon emissions. James Harris, Accenture’s director of cloud services says,
“The study’s findings confirm what many organisations have already discovered: Cloud computing is more economical and IT resources are used more efficiently when business applications run in a shared environment. That’s because, among other benefits, cloud computing delivers multiple efficiencies, which contribute to the reduction of energy consumption per unit of work, thereby helping to significantly reduce carbon emissions.”
Another tech innovation around reducing the energy needed by servers, is a a bit on the morbid side, but is definitely worthy of a mention. Lately there have been ideas emerging around closing peoples’ online profiles/emails/etc once they pass away. One and a half million Facebook users die a year, and apparently Twitter has a statistic equal by comparison. Facebook and Twitter will shut down or archive accounts for families if a death certificate is provided, and for other networks and services there are procedures to follow. Although the topic is a sensitive one, it’s an important consideration when looking at the amount of data that’s stored on servers.
So, is the IT industry more of the problem than the solution? I don’t think so. With clever software, load balancing, cloud computing, more renewable energy sources used in hosting and a black search engine, there are plenty of ways to lower the impact that IT has on the environment – not to mention the brilliant things the internet and IT has done to enable projects and communities around the world to act on climate change – but I’ll save that one for a later post ;)
Katherine Hui is currently the Social site editor at Green Thing, a web-based public service in London that inspires people to lead greener lives through creative content.
Before this, she worked as the Development Manager at Social Innovation Camp, an organization that encourages people to use web and mobile-based technology to mobilise social change. She oversaw 300 ideas submission and helped build 20 prototypes – five of which have gone on to get further funding or investment.
Katherine’s came over to the UK form Canada in 2007 for an MSc program at the London School of Economics. Before arriving in London, she managed a small environmental start-up in Vancouver called the Canadian Climate Change Alliance.
Katherine is football mad. She is a loyal supporter of Arsenal FC, plays for Islington Borough Ladies FC and coaches for Gunners in Islington in her spare time. Her second favourite hobby is kite surfing and she can sometimes be found chasing the wind.
