This article was written by Najm Eldin Hassan, and he is the copyright owner.
The Internet is an integral part of our daily life; the first thing that many people do in the morning is to check our social media accounts, news websites, and work emails. At first glance, the internet bubble seems to be far away from all climate change issues. However, a simple Google search generates 5-7 grams of CO2, and a single email generates 20 grams of CO2; all the data we retrieve and how it is saved in the servers affects the environment. These storage servers are called Clouds. Unlike typical white clouds crowning our blue sky and roaming freely, storage clouds are the size of 10 football stadiums. They have been operating for over two decades nonstop to allow users to access their data, so they can pick up where they left off on any project at any time of the day. Yet this luxury comes with a price; keeping the servers running 24/7 produces significant heat in the facilities and requires constant cooling to help keep the plants meeting customers’ expectations. A single data centre can consume the electricity equivalent of 50,000 homes. Today, the electricity data centres account for 2 percent of global carbon emissions, almost the same as the aviation industry.
The way we use the internet has changed over the course of two decades; data flying across the web has transformed from a few megabits to terabits, mostly from emails, videos, stream media, and articles; all sorts of information is stored in what we have always known as the cloud. What happens when someone decides to save something on data storage like iCloud or Google Drive? Once uploaded, the saved file is stored at a data centre – somewhere worldwide and not necessarily geographically close to the original location. The data travels thousands of miles, sometimes across countries, for example, between the USA and Japan, faster than the speed of light. Data storage creates a large carbon footprint because data centres use copious amounts of energy to keep their servers running for switches, lights, HVAC and other special equipment, and emergency power banks. Retrieving data from the cloud may seem like a simple task on the outside, but in reality, excessive amounts of energy are used. According to electricity rates in the U.S., storing terabytes of information on the cloud using data storage creates a carbon footprint equivalent to 500 kg of CO2e. Nowadays, consumers have their own YouTube channels with videos stored in the cloud, sorted according to their preference, ready to be viewed at any time of the day, or a social media account cluttered with hundreds of images. The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) estimates that the average U.K. adult takes almost 900 photos yearly, notably since the click and post-era boom began. An average of five photographs were taken for everyone posted online. The duplicated and unwanted images left in storage accumulate 10.6kg of CO2 emissions per person annually. This pattern has caused “dirty data” habits: storing millions of unnecessary images and videos on servers worldwide, creating a storage carbon footprint.
Green Internet
As climate issues became a core part of our lives, mainly because they affect how we live, companies became aware that they had to change how servers operate. Apple was one of the early companies to build data storage facilities that use renewable energy. The company model achieved such wide success that Apple obtained permission to sell excess energy produced. Companies like Google and Facebook decided to build storage centres in cold, remote areas like Finland and the North Pole, to keep storage units cool using less energy. Also, nonprofit organisations like the Climate Savers Computing Initiative aim to reduce energy consumption caused by computers.
One of Europe’s largest server operators, the German web-space provider Strato, determined that they could reduce energy consumption by implementing high-performance, energy-efficient hardware and software and accurate cooling systems that use sensors and special “cool corridors” to regulate temperature. Strato started reducing CO2 emissions in 2008 by switching to renewable energy to power their servers. They have joined the Green Grid, a group of IT companies and professionals working to improve energy efficiency in data centres and business computing worldwide. The organisation aims to green the IT industry by bringing together “global industry efforts to collaborate on a common set of metrics, processes, methods, and new technologies to further its common goals.”
Responsible internet use
Not all companies have taken the high road of saving the environment; companies like Twitter and Amazon still get around 40% of their energy from fossil fuels. At the same time, other businesses don’t have the financial ability to turn their cloud storage servers into a renewable energy facility. But before holding business companies accountable, we must look more deeply at the E-storage waste we have created. Many unused data files, emails, and PDFs we made years ago still clutter the storage units today, and they will keep taking up space unless we start taking the corrective action of reducing unused files in our Google Drive accounts, laptops, or MacBooks so we can free space for others and our new memories. So, the next time you skip deleting unwanted emails or spend endless time watching stream media, ask yourself at what cost this is happening.
References
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Monserrate, S. (2022) The staggering ecological impacts of computation and the cloud, The MIT
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Safdie, S. (2023) What is the carbon footprint of data storage?, Greenly. Available at:
https://greenly.earth/en-gb/blog/ecology-news/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-data-storage (Accessed: 02 November 2023).
Schmidt, S. (2010) The dark side of cloud computing: Soaring Carbon Emissions, The Guardian.
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