Ever wondered, how over internet behavior affects the environment ?
Most of us love getting jokes and funny pictures over the mail, and then forward it to our friends. As a results there are millions of redundant emails which are circulating over the internet. More over there are billions of spam messages that are being created and sent to as many number of users around the world every single day. We have stopped bothering about these, and started dismissing them as mere nuisances that waste our time (Thanks to unlimited mail storage provided by email providers).But there is more to it. Have you ever thought about the Environmental impact of these forwards, chain mails and spams ? Well, you are in for a surprise!
All the email service providers use huge data centers to store and retrieve our emails. And these data centers consume a lot of energy and are thus a significant contributers to global CO2 emissions.
Data centres that require energy to run servers and provide cooling account for almost a quarter of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from information and communications technology (ICT), according to Gartner.
All the datacentres in the world in their totality, consume approximately 20GW (gigawatts) of power in our estimate (5000 datacentres world-wide requiring 2MW for powering the hardware and 2MW for cooling). This is 175 million metric tons of CO2 emission per annum and accounts for 2% of global CO2 emissions, placing it on a par with the aviation industry.
So, next time, you are tempted to forward a chain mail to your friend, think twice. Chain mails not only waste time, but precious energy as well at the cost of our environment.
Most of us love getting jokes and funny pictures over the mail, and then forward it to our friends. As a results there are millions of redundant emails which are circulating over the internet. More over there are billions of spam messages that are being created and sent to as many number of users around the world every single day. We have stopped bothering about these, and started dismissing them as mere nuisances that waste our time (Thanks to unlimited mail storage provided by email providers).But there is more to it. Have you ever thought about the Environmental impact of these forwards, chain mails and spams ? Well, you are in for a surprise!
All the email service providers use huge data centers to store and retrieve our emails. And these data centers consume a lot of energy and are thus a significant contributers to global CO2 emissions.
Data centres that require energy to run servers and provide cooling account for almost a quarter of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from information and communications technology (ICT), according to Gartner.
All the datacentres in the world in their totality, consume approximately 20GW (gigawatts) of power in our estimate (5000 datacentres world-wide requiring 2MW for powering the hardware and 2MW for cooling). This is 175 million metric tons of CO2 emission per annum and accounts for 2% of global CO2 emissions, placing it on a par with the aviation industry.
Moreover, with the number of internet users regstering double digit growth each years. These figure are set to rise faster.
Though the modern data centers are designed to consume lesser energy (lesser by 25-50%) than their older counterparts,but most of the companies are not in a position to effect a rapid switch over to new, greener machines. So, emissions from datacentres are set to grow for atleast the next 5- 10 years , with the increase in the number of internet users, and the increasing complexity of web 2.0 sites. Also The ever increasing numbers of sites, blogs on the internet and the exponential growth in information that the existing online databases are seeing will only make the matter worse.So, next time, you are tempted to forward a chain mail to your friend, think twice. Chain mails not only waste time, but precious energy as well at the cost of our environment.
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