Internet and Sustainability
Unquestionably, the invention of internet has changed the world. It has shifted all aspects of people's life. Internet is a technology with significant magnitude of impacts to humanity: imaginably comparable to the discovery of fire, wheel and paper. Internet has been an inseparable aspect of our daily life. Its application is extensive and significant. Almost everything can be linked to the internet. Updating your status on your social media or having a million dollar transaction in the stock exchange: both use internet. Internet has created more jobs and opportunities. A study by McKinsey Company (2011) suggested that The Internet is responsible for 21% of GDP growth within 5 years among developed countries.
A Google data center (networkstatic.net 2012)
Internet is a big leap in human history. Having that being said, the next big question is: how significant the impacts of the Internet to the environment and sustainability? Climate change and the global warming have become the largest threats that the humanity faces today. I have mentioned this in my previous post about the rise and fall of civilizations. Has the discovery of internet contributed to the decline of the environment or has it provided ways to fix it instead?
Let's start by asking a very simple question, "What is the carbon footprint of a Google search?". We have been using Google as our primary guru to look for information. Yet, have we ever thought about the environmental consequences of this "seemed like trivial-activity". A research by a Harvard's physicist revealed that a search on a computer causes approximately 7 grams of CO2. In other words, doing two searches is equal to boiling a kettle of water (Musil 2009). This may sound insignificant, but let's do the math. In 2012, Google released the data that it was doing 100 billion searches per month (Sullivan 2016). That is equal to 1.2 trillion searches per year. By multiplying this to 7 grams, we found out that google search engine is responsible for approximately 8.4 million tons of CO2 emission annually. This number could be much larger now knowing that Google never update the data since then (Sullivan 2016). Recently they said the number of searches is over the number released in 2012. How much over? They didn't specifically mention. If you're curious about the live feed of number of searches happening on Google, you may check this statistic.
Google search is only a fraction of the internet. We have a wide range of services and activities using the internet. Video streaming such as Youtube could generate much larger carbon dioxide and consume more energy due to the larger amount of data being transferred. It has been reported the the global IT industry generates approximately the same amount of CO2 emissions as the world's airlines. This confirms that the internet has an obvious environmental impact.
Despite the impacts, a number of conscious efforts have been made by the internet giants to reduce their environmental footprint. Google, for example, claims that their data centers operate by consuming 50% less energy than typical data centers. Their strategy for minimizing the impacts can be further explored here and here. Most of these data centers' whereabouts are confidential to ensure the security and reliability of the information storage. However, if you want to find out how a Google data center looks like, you could explore its interior by taking a virtual 3D tour here.
Talking about the efficiency of data centers, I came across a design by Valeria Mercuri and Marco Merletti whose concept won a third place in the 2016 Evolo skyscraper design competition. The design utilizes the cold climate of Iceland to naturally cool down the heat produced by the servers. Although it looks ambitious, it proposes a bold idea of having sustainability without compromising the many good benefits of the internet for humanity.
Sustainable data center tower design (Lofgren 2016)
References:
Clarck, D 2011, 'Google discloses carbon footprint for the first time', 9 September, The Guardian,
duRausas, M et.al. 2011, Internet matters: The Net's sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity, Mc Kinsey Global Institute, <http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/internet-matters>
Lofgren, K 2016, 'This skyscraper is a sustainable data center in Iceland', 28 March, Inhabitat, <http://inhabitat.com/this-skyscraper-is-a-sustainable-data-center-in-iceland/>
McCarthy, P 2014, "The Internet Has Created More Jobs But They're Clustered In Just A Few Companies", 2 January, <http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-internet-has-created-more-jobs-but-theyre-clustered-in-just-a-few-companies-2014-1>
Musil, S 2009, 'Measuring your Google search's carbon footprint', <http://www.cnet.com/au/news/measuring-your-google-searchs-carbon-footprint/>
Sullivan, D 2012, "Google: 100 Billion Searches Per Month, Search To Integrate Gmail, Launching Enhanced Search App For iOS", 8 August, <http://searchengineland.com/google-search-press-129925>
Sullivan, D 2016, 'Google Still Doing At Least 1 Trillion Searches Per Year', 16 January,
