The true environmental cost of the Internet

https://news.mongabay.com/2021/07/the-true-environmental-cost-of-the-internet-commentary/

Let’s take a look at one activity, one that occupies even more time of our lives than sleeping: the use of internet.

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It is estimated that the internet represents more than 1% of the world’s energy consumption, an amount greater than the total consumption of several nations combined. This is predicted to grow in orders of magnitude over the next decade.

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It is estimated that 80% of the energy it relies on comes from fossil fuels.

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Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple all have committed to using 100% renewable sources of energy and of offsetting their emissions by the end of the decade.

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And the plans of offsetting emissions are often closer to purchasing guilt-free PR.

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the use, transmission, and storage of a gigabyte (GB) of information represents between 28 to 54 grams of emitted carbon to the atmosphere.

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The impact cannot only be measured in terms of emitted carbon but also in the water needed to produce that energy through hydroelectric power source.

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the water (through hydroelectric power) required equal the amount of water it would take to fill one million Olympic size swimming pools per year.

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Now, if we further evaluate that in terms of the space needed to house the hard-drive equipment in the “data centers” [···] in sum, everything on the web, it adds up to a space that equals the size of New York City, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City combined.

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The number of internet users around the world is about 4.6 billion people, i.e. more than half the global population.

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streaming videos at high resolution (HD) requires 7 GB per hour and equals close to releasing almost half kilo of carbon to the atmosphere.

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“if 70 million streaming subscribers were to lower the video quality of their streaming services, there would be a monthly reduction in 3.5 million t of CO2, the equivalent of eliminating 1.7 million tons of coal, or approximately 6% of the total monthly coal consumption in the US”.

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