Is the Internet becoming uncool for greenies?

By Stan Beer
Wednesday, 14 January 2009 07:24

Science - Energy

"A Harvard University researcher estimated that a Google search generates something like 7 grams of CO2. Google engineers rebut this with an estimate of 0.2 grams.

"The science of this measurement is ‘imprecise’ but let’s put it in perspective. A small car generates something like 100g of CO2 per kilometre, so a Google search is equivalent to driving a small car between 2 and 70 metres."

Regardless of the differing scales of carbon footprint, comparing the environmental impact of the Internet to the automobile industry is not something that gladdens the heart of Internet players.

As Dr Hodgkinson asks: "Many people avoid using cars to minimise their CO2 footprint so, using the same logic, should we also now shun the Internet to protect the planet?"

According to Dr Hodgkinson, the answer is a simple no.

Dr Hodgkinson believes the solution lays in investing in more energy efficient data centres not curbing Internet usage which he describes as a Catch 22.

"Stifling demand for the Internet should not be seen as a solution to Internet data centre energy consumption until we have made more progress on at least three areas of supply-side energy efficiency," states Dr Hodgkinson.

"The first is power usage efficiency (PUE). The US Environmental Protection Agency’s 2007 study revealed that the historical PUE of data centres was observed to be around 2 – meaning that half of the energy that flows into a data centre is wasted in such things as power conversions, cooling and lighting before being applied to useful computing work. State-of-the-art data centre engineering and server consolidation/virtualisation strategies can see PUE reduce to 1.2 and below, but this requires investment in refurbishing legacy data centres and server farms and in new operational practices.

"The second is the low energy proportionality of the current suite of computing technologies. Reducing demand by 10% does not necessarily lead to a 10% reduction in energy consumption. CPUs and RAM chips consume power even when idle. Disk drives spin regardless of data traffic. There is a lot of R&D underway to improve the energy proportionality of data centres, but the reality today is that reducing demand does not necessarily lead to lower CO2 emissions.

"The third is the often hyped ‘green energy’ – connecting data centres to solar, wind or geothermal power to replace coal fired generation.

"Here is the ‘Catch 22’. Robust demand is required to generate revenues to fund investment in the more energy efficient technologies required to actually reduce global data centre CO2 emissions. Too much hype around the CO2 cost of Internet usage may well lead to people choosing to shun the Internet, starving companies of the traffic-related revenues needed to actually solve the problem."

In the meantime, Dr Hodgkinson concludes by offering a snippet of sensible homespun advice for the environmentally conscious population who want to mimimise their carbon footprint but don't want to join the growing throng of proud technology luddites.

"Perhaps it’s better just to suggest that people turn their computers off when they are not being used."