The Internet’s Energy Consumption and Its Carbon Footprint

Over the past few years there has been an ongoing debate about the growing amount of energy needed to power the World Wide Web, a.k.a the Internet, and the impacts on our environment.  Many have tried to pin down the exact amount of energy needed to power the internet and its carbon footprint. Recently The Guardian published an article saying that the Internet’s carbon footprint was around 300 million tonnes of CO2 per year, equivalent to every person in the UK flying to America and back twice over.

The article was published in August and with the number of internet users growing by the day worldwide I wouldn’t be surprised if these figures were higher nowadays.  According to the UN by the end of the year there will be 2 billion world internet users, that is 1/6 of world population.

Hypothetically, if these growth rates remain the same, the entire world would be online by 2020.

To measure the Internet’s exact power consumption and then determine its carbon footprint we would need to know the precise number of computers, laptops and mobile phones that are online these days (which we don’t). Add that to the amount of energy consumed by all the Data Centres worldwide to then determine the internet power consumption and its carbon footprint.

Scary isn’t it? But we gathered some data just to give you a better understanding of roughly how much energy is needed to power the World Wide Web these days.

Back in 2006, data centres in America consumed a total of 61,000,000,000 kWh (yes you read it right 61 trillion kWh), which is enough to power the UK for 2 whole months.

A single Google search produces 0.2g of CO2. Not that much right? But now, 3,100,000 Google searches emit enough CO2 to power an average house for a whole month.

The monthly searches processed by Google produce 260 tons of CO2 which is equivalent to power an American fridge-freezer for 5,400 years. This consumes 3,900,000 kWh of energy, which is equal to washing 5.57 million loads of laundry.

But wait, it gets worse! A single spam message produces the equivalent of 0.3 grams of CO2. Multiply that by 62 trillion pieces of spam circling the World Wide Web each year and we have the emissions equivalent of driving around the Earth 1.6 million times.

Despite its huge energy consumption the internet is likely to play an important role as we move towards a low carbon economy. Thanks to advances in communication technologies an estimated 40% of the working population could work from home. If 40% of American workforce worked from home twice a week, carbon emission would be reduced by 53 million metric tons year, equivalent of taking 10 million cars on the road.

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UK Business Gas Prices Drop despite Forecasted Cold Spell

British gas prices have dropped on Monday despite the forecasted cold weather, opposite to what happened at the beginning of the month when the first cold spell hit Britain and rocketed UK gas prices.

Backed by a strong supply from Norway and Netherlands plus LNG imports helped keep UK gas prices at lower levels. Gas for delivery today was traded at 61.70 pence per therm at 0918 GMT (Monday), down 0.10 from the previous session, and the balance-of-the-week price fell 0.65 pence to 61.75 pence.

Norwegian and Dutch imports more than 90 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas to the British market, helping meet above-average demand levels. According to National Grid data gas demand is 10% higher than usual for this season.

“It is looking like being very cold again on Saturday but that has been pretty well forecast and planned for,” one British gas trader said.

Strong supply margin forecasts and a high number of LNG tankers expected to arrive in the due course of December also made January gas prices drop 30p to 58.95 pence ($9.31 per mmBtu). But gas and energy brokers are still not very confident about long term gas prices as storage supply could drop later in the winter.

Rough stock levels – Britain’s largest storage site – were 30% lower than a year ago. This could push gas prices up towards the end of the winter.

As expected for this time of the year, energy prices went up slightly as demand increased, despite the prospect of EDF’s Hartlepool 2 nuclear reactor being reconnected to the Grid over the weekend.

Power for day-ahead was traded at 57.00 pounds per megawatt-hour (MWh, registering a 1 pound increase. While power for delivery in January traded at 52.70 pounds per MWh, up 0.60 pounds from Friday’s session.

“I think winter contracts are fundamentally bearish, but no one is brave enough to sell it with gas volatility,” said one energy broker.

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Wind Farms To Spring Up All Over Britain

Wind Power a low cost green technology for the future -  It is becoming ever so clear that the Government is planning in relying mostly on wind power to achieve its climate change bills commitment. By 2020, 15% of all energy generated in Britain must come from renewables.   As the windiest place in Europe it is only logical that we rely on this type of renewable energy resource.

The Government is subsidising a handful of projects that are working on making eolic energy generation more efficient. Two of these projects have caught our attention – Floating Wind Farms and the new generation of giant wind turbines.

Floating wind farms have been discussed for quite a while now and the progress in research made by companies like Statoil are making a viable business opportunity for the near future.

The technology basically copies the principles from floating oil rigs and it will allow wind turbines to be sited in waters as deep as 300m.  At the moment wind farms are usually sited at depths of up to 30m before it becomes difficult to build a standing structure.

These floating wind farms could also solve the complaint problems of many communities that are against onshore and offshore wind farms which are close to the shore and are blamed for ruining views.

But that problem won’t be solved anytime soon as a new generation of giant wind turbines taller than anything which has been built so far in the UK are planned for Norfolk and Lincolnshire.

The Sunday Telegraph reported that two companies lodged plans to built wind farms with turbines of 493ft high. For reference these turbines will be three times taller than Nelson’s Column and two-thirds the height of Canary Wharf Tower.

According to the Sunday Telegraph that is only the tip of the iceberg as there is a total of 20 projects for these giant wind turbines.

As expected communities where the turbines will be built fear they are far too big and will blight the British landscape. Some claim that if it wasn’t for consumer subsidies made available by the Government these turbines would not be economically viable. Others go as far as saying that these turbines will be built in places where there is not much wind.

A spokeswoman for RenewableUK, the trade body for the renewable energy industry, said: “The increase in size is actually improving the economic benefits of wind energy since greater yields can be achieved, while maintaining the low environmental impact of smaller sized turbines.”

And added:

“Those seeking to block wind farm developments on the grounds of aesthetics are actually preventing the flow of thousands of pounds of investment into their local communities.”

Whether wind farms are built onshore or offshore and if they reach sky high heights or not don’t really matter to me as long as they prove to be efficient. So the Government and its regulatory bodies must be very strict when approving subsidies to renewable energy generation projects.

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Our monthly analysis of the UK gas and power markets is now available on line for the month of December 2010. The service is intended to keep you up to date with all the major news in Europe’s gas and power markets. It is also designed to keep power executives focused on market activity in an easy to digest format.

Your find our December 2010 report here and all historical energy reports can be located here.

If you would like more information on our services or would like to find out how this could benefit your business, simply call our energy team today on 0870 710 7560 or request a call back at time to suit.

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Fact and Figures about Global Warming

There are many facts and myths surrounding global warming but there is no debate in the scientific world that human evolution has contributed to it. In this article you will find facts and figures that prove human kind are contributing towards climate change. In the last 50 years, Alaska’s temperature has gone up around twice the rate of the rest of the world.

This could very well be because Alaska is close to one of the biggest producers of green house gases countries.

Aviation is considered responsible for about 3.5% of climate change, but that figure could reach 15% by 2050 as air travel increases.

If China eventually uses as much paper as the U.S. currently does, it will need twice as much as the entire world now produces. Imagine how many trees will have to be cut down to produce that much paper.

Landfills account for more than one-third of all emissions of methane (a greenhouse gas) in the United States. In third world countries this margin is even bigger.

Loading the dishwasher fully, instead of using partial loads, can save about 100 pounds of carbon a year.

Putting your computer in sleep mode instead of using a screen saver is good for saving almost 1,100 pounds of carbon annually.

Since 2007 China is the world leader in total carbon dioxide emissions with 6018m metric tonnes of CO2. But that doesn’t mean China is the most polluting nation in the world.

A more useful metric is carbon emissions per capita, the average American is responsible for 19.8 tonnes per person, and the average Chinese citizen clocks in at 4.6 tonnes. The UK’s CO2 per capita is at 9.7 tonnes per person while Australia is on 20.6 per person.

One thing that there is no debate among scientists and climate change experts is that we need to reduce our CO2 emissions and a way to do that is to invest in renewable energy generation resources.

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The Ocean’s Power

Nowadays the buzz words of the energy industry are “renewable energy“. Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves and geothermal heat. As you might have noticed some of the afore mentioned resources come from the Earth’s biggest natural resources, the Oceans.

Oceans can produce different types of energy, including thermal energy from the sun’s heat and mechanical energy from the action of waves and tides. Public and private institutions around the globe are investing big bucks to harness this energy resource in ways that are safe, sustainable and environmentally safe.

The U.S. Department of Energy, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, or BOEMRE, and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, has announced a joint research to study the potential environmental impacts of harnessing energy from the oceans. The research will also develop techniques and regulations to support the responsible sitting and permitting of offshore wind energy facilities and ocean energy generated from waves, tides, currents and thermal gradients.

Speaking on the matter the US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said:

“The nation’s oceans represent a major potential source of clean renewable energy, and the Department of Energy is committed to developing the innovative technologies that will harness that potential,”

As afore mentioned there are many ways to generate energy using the oceans like, tidal, waves, offshore wind farms. But without doubt the most innovative and eco-friendly one is OTEC or Ocean Thermal Energy Conservation.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) uses the temperature difference that exists between deep and shallow waters to run a heat engine. As with any heat engine, the greatest efficiency and power is produced with the largest temperature difference and up until now this was the biggest challenge for OTEC. But recent developments in efficiency of heat exchange assisted by modern designs performance can reach theoretical maximum efficiency making OTEC a viable and efficient renewable energy resource. For detailed information on OTEC please read: Ocean Thermal Energy

As you can see there are many ways to harness energy from our oceans but we must do it in a responsible way without affecting the ocean’s eco-systems.

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Is Facebook Responsible For Higher Energy Bills?

As a market leading energy broker we have noticed that the current generation is more committed to discovering and reducing its carbon footprint than ever before.  But despite this growing awareness and our need to conserve and reduce our energy consumption, there is one thing that has changed our lifestyle, and increased our energy consumption like nothing else we have ever seen before.  Facebook, the social networking site accounted for 1 in every 10 internet visits in September – up 4% from the same month last year, now overtaking popular search engines such as Google in the rankings.

Astonishingly Facebook now attracts 55% of all visits to social networking sites but others such as Twitter, Linkedin and Tumblr have seen visits at least double in the last 12-months, a recent report suggested.

With all of this increased online activity comes an obvious need for an increased supply of electricity, both from the millions of online users, to the huge new data centers needed to host all of this data.  With its membership now passing the 500-million mark back in July, the storage and transmitting of messages, pictures and other information through Facebook uses a vast and still rapidly increasing amount of energy, as the network continues to expand its worldwide operations.

And with 4.5 billion updates posted to Facebook every week, the vast amount of energy needed for all of this online activity is enormous.

One of the pricing fundamentals of any commodity is the supply and demand factor, and with any increased demand, we see an impact on the supply and eventually the cost.

Because of Facebook’s rapid growth, their new hosting facility will need to be twice the size of its previous data centre, and to compound this issue the main source of electricity for the site is from coal fired power stations, the largest source of global warming pollution.

But this problem isn’t just limited just to Facebook, as the demand for cloud based applications grows Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others are investing billions of dollars to build new data centers to meet their growing demand for Web services, adding to the world pollution from computing.

In fact a recent study has estimated that the average user now spends at least 7-hours a month on Facebook alone, and reports suggest that this desire for social networking is set to increase further over the coming years.

Given that energy is an expensive and rising cost, these service providers do have a financial and environmental motivation to use as little electricity as possible.

But the implications for increased online activity is unlike anything that we have ever experienced before in our life times, and our desire and hunger for further social media interaction wont stop here.

Facebook is set to launch its latest Google taunting product on Monday, the long anticipated Facebook email system. The launch of an @facebook.com email is not itself a great surprise, as the existence of a secret project officially known as Project Titan has been circulating since February.

We just hope that our dwindling business energy supplies can cope long term with all of this increased use of energy.

More Facebook Facts

• Facebook like served a billion likes in the first 24 hours after its launch
• To put your friend count in perspective, the average user has 130
• People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook, while the current active official user count now stands at over 500 million.
• More than 2.5 billion pictures are uploaded to Facebook each month.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the fifth-largest country in the world, after China, India, the U.S., and Indonesia.
• There are more than 800,000 developers building applications for Facebook.
• 70% of Facebook users live outside of the US.
• Yahoo! tried to buy Facebook in 2006 for $1,000,000,000.
• 8,300,000,000 hours are spent on Facebook monthly.
• Facebook was originally bankrolled by a co-founder of Paypal for $500,000

Please add your comments below as we would love to know your thoughts on this for you and your business.

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