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.

If you would like more information on our range of energy broker 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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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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Our monthly analysis of the UK gas and power markets is now available on line for the month of November 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 November 2010 report here and all historical energy reports can be located here.

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Energy Efficiency Q&A Round Two

As promised here we are with the second round of question and answers about energy efficiency. Today we will answer questions about rebound effect and negawatt, so if you want to find out the meaning of these terms keep on reading.

What does energy efficiency mean for businesses?

For a business, energy efficiency mostly applies to electrical appliances, heating equipment and everything else powered by electricity. Governments have pushed manufacturers to produce increasingly low-energy devices, such as desktop computers, televisions, refrigerators, freezers and a wide variety of electrical appliances used in each industry.

Simple energy efficiency measures at work include installing loft and wall insulation, draught-sealing windows and doors and replacing incandescent bulbs with efficient, modern CFLs and LED lights.

Cars are covered by a different energy efficiency scheme, which looks similar to the red-to-green EU Energy Label and ranks vehicles on their carbon emissions per kilometre (CO2 g/km). The most efficient modern cars emit less than CO2 100g/km, and all new cars in the EU will be required to – on average across European fleets – emit less than 130g/km by 2015. But this is content for another article, lets get back to energy efficiency.

What’s the rebound effect, and what does it mean for energy efficiency?

In 1865, William Stanley Jevons suggested that improvements in energy efficiency could result in unintended “rebound effects” – such as behavioural changes – that offset the energy savings. For example, greater fuel efficiency in cars may actually lead to motorists driving more frequently and for greater distances, cancelling out the environmental benefits of efficiency.

A report from Cambridge University earlier this year suggested that such rebound effects could cancel out 52% of anticipated energy efficiency savings by 2030.

What’s a negawatt?

The IEA suggests that energy efficiency should effectively be viewed as just another energy source, much like coal or wind power. Following the spirit of the IEA, the US scientist Amory Lovins suggested using the compound “negawatt” (negative-watt) as a unit for expressing the energy waste avoided through energy efficiency.

We have reached the end of the second of our Energy Efficiency Q&A. We would love to have a third round but for this we’ll need your help. Head to our Twitter account or Facebook Page and leave your questions there or if you prefer you can use our comments section below.

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Energy Efficiency Q&A Round One

Every time we discuss the current and future state of Britain’s energy industry a certain subjects can not be avoided, such as energy efficiency, climate change, carbon footprint, green energy and few others that we will discuss in a series of two articles starting today.

So what is energy efficiency? Is energy saving the same as energy efficiency? What role does energy efficiency play in slowing climate change? Below you will find answers to all these questions.

What is energy efficiency?

Energy efficiency generally refers to achieving the same result – lighting up a house, for example – by using less energy. It can be used to describe everything from small-scale changes such as more energy-efficient refrigerators and PCs in homes right up to more efficient power stations or energy savings across a company’s supply chain.

Perhaps the most obvious example of energy efficiency is the energy-saving lightbulb. A compact fluorescent (CFL) bulb typically uses around fives times less energy than a conventional incandescent bulb, but produces the same level of illumination.

What’s the difference between energy efficiency and energy-saving?

Though the two are often used interchangeably, efficiency is just one aspect of energy-saving (sometimes called energy conservation). Energy-saving can also include, for instance, behavioural changes such as encouraging individuals to turn appliances off standby, or technologies such as automated lighting systems that only turn on when they detect movement.

How big a role does efficiency play in slowing climate change?

Alongside increased energy generation from renewable sources, it’s one of the two key strategies that governments are deploying to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The UN sees efficiency improvements as quicker and cheaper to implement than green energy, and such speed will be crucial to avoid tipping points – where dangerous runaway climate change occurs – that scientists believe may be less than a decade away.

Efficiency has a major role to play in cutting CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The International Energy Agency (IEA) believes that improvements in efficiency alone could be responsible for 65% of the reduction in emissions from developing countries over the next 20 years. The UK’s Committee on Climate Change places energy efficiency at the heart of its recommendations for meeting the UK target of an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050.

This is it for round one of our Energy Efficiency Q&A, hope you enjoyed it and make sure you don’t miss the second round on Friday.

Got a question you want to ask about energy efficiency? Use our comments section to do so or feel free to drop us line on Twitter or on our Facebook Page with your queries. You never know your question might be featured on the second round of our Energy Efficiency Q&A.

If you would like more information on our range of energy 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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Replace your old lights for new commercial led lighting

A very wise man once said, “the only thing that’s permanent is change.” And indeed, it’s true – regardless of what industry you belong to, things are quite different today than they were only a few years ago. However, the change we’re referring to in this article is about commercial LED lighting.

Gone are the days when we had mercury-coated excuses for lamps to light our offices and workplaces. In fact, even the seemingly modern incandescent lamps have begun their journey towards being completely obsolete. However, the good thing about it is that they’re moving down to get replaced with something that is truly superior in every aspect imaginable.

To begin with, let’s consider power consumption. Commercial LED lighting is 70%-80% more energy efficient than traditional lighting, which is no mean feat at all. This is possible due to the superior technology used for the design and manufacturing of LED lights. This means that if your current lighting system costs you, say £2000, LED lights will bring that bill down to about £400.

Another consideration is the life of the product. LED lights can last up to 50,000 hours, which is about ten times as high as incandescent lamps. This also means that each LED light is effectively worth five regular lamps even if you consider just the lifetime of these devices. When you factor in the kind of reduction in electricity bills LED lights would bring about during this lifetime, the equation goes so far in favor of LED lights that not buying them might even seem illogical.

When we discuss the lifetime of these lights, there’s another factor that comes into the picture – the maintenance efforts and cost. As a simple equation, since an LED light lasts five times as much as traditional lights, it also means that the cost of maintenance and replacement of these lights would be five times lesser than that for traditional lighting.

LED lights also produce less heat, which means that the power required to keep the area clean is reduced by a certain amount. This leads to further saving in electricity bills because there’s lesser load on the air conditioners to cool the surrounding area.

We could just go on and on about why LED lights are superior, however, we believe that we’ve made our point. Be smart and reevaluate your commercial lighting systems today.

If you would like more information on our Commercial LED Lighting 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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