Digital carbon footprint explained
What started as a god-send in efficiency and opportunity quickly became a way of life that changed the world order. We use the internet for everything: From communication via emails and text messages to online learning and education to video streaming and gaming for entertainment. More than half of the world’s population is now online. But this overgrown dependence on the internet and its capacity to keep us busy all the time is not only ruining our psychological and physical health, but also our environment. Everyone is aware of the term ‘carbon footprint’. But awareness about energy consumption and carbon emissions contributed by 24x7 internet usage is yet to enter public discussion. These emissions are termed as Digital Carbon Footprint.
How do digital carbon emissions work?
Can emails sent from a device to another account for 4% of the world’s greenhouse emission? Let’s see how:
- The carbon footprint of the internet is generated by the electricity and power required to keep its infrastructure running. Data centers, mobile devices, networks, all require energy to continue operating Data centers rely on energy companies that use coal or nuclear power to generate electricity
- They need the energy to process the enormous data streams, generating heat as a by-product
- In order to prevent machines from overheating, additional energy is required to cool servers down through ventilation
- In places where electricity isn’t reliable, diesel power generators are used to keep the internet running
Overall, lasting damage is done to the environment.
What is the actual impact of digital carbon emission?
Every minute, 150,000,000 emails are sent, releasing a staggering 600,000 kg of carbon dioxide. The contribution of digital carbon emissions is estimated to be equal to or more than that of the entire aviation industry. A good chunk of this comes from video streaming, which causes 75 percent of global data traffic. If we use a search engine to make around 50 search queries per day, we produce 26 kg of CO2 a year!
The Google Environmental Report 2017 alone put its carbon footprint for 2016 at 2.9 million tons of CO2, and its electrical energy consumption at 6.2 terawatt hours (TWh). Music streaming services emitted around 200 to 350 million kg of greenhouse gas in 2015 and 2016. While there are no official figures for data centres yet, it is estimated that 200 to 500 billion kilowatt hours a year are used by them, and future predictions, while unreliable, range up to 3000 billion kilowatt hours by the year 2030.
What is being done to reduce e-carbon waste?
Big companies like Apple are switching to renewable sources of energy like solar power to work their data centres. Facebook is building a data centre that will run entirely on wind power. Google has launched initiatives to boost environmental transparency. But while big companies can afford to rebuild their own infrastructure and invest in minimising electricity consumption, smaller ventures still prioritise business over the environment.
What can we do at individual levels?
- De-clutter your email! Unsubscribe from all newsletters you don’t read, opt-out of updates you don’t follow, delete junk mail regularly
- Reduce streaming. Downloading video files is a lot less energy-intensive than online streaming
- Don’t be quick to upgrade to newer models of your mobile devices. Tech waste is a major polluter
- Use WLAN networks instead of personal mobile data
- Forget about the cloud. Store data locally