From the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., January 2:
'Completely unsustainable': How streaming and other data demands take a toll on the environment
Tech firms look for solutions as data centres use huge amounts of power to fuel streaming and social media
For those of us binge-watching TV shows, installing new smartphone apps or sharing family photos on social media over the holidays, it may seem like an abstract predicament.
The gigabytes of data we're using — although invisible — come at a significant cost to the environment. Some experts say it rivals that of the airline industry.
And as more smart devices rely on data to operate (think internet-connected refrigerators or self-driving cars), their electricity demands are set to skyrocket.
"We are using an immense amount of energy to drive this data revolution," said Jane Kearns, an environment and technology expert at MaRS Discovery District, an innovation hub in Toronto.
"It has real implications for our climate."
Tech companies in Canada and abroad, however, are coming up with innovative solutions to curb the growing problem.
It's not the gadgets themselves that are drawing so much power, it's the far-flung servers that act as their electronic brains. Although often described as the "cloud," the servers exist in real-world data centres, which Kearns calls "massive energy hogs."
The data centres, often bigger than a football field, house endless stacks of servers handling many terabytes (thousands of gigabytes) of digital traffic. Just as laptops tend to warm during heavy usage, servers must be cooled to avoid overheating. And cooling so many machines requires plenty of power.
How much power does it take?
Anders Andrae, a researcher at Huawei Technologies Sweden whose estimates are often cited, told CBC News in an email he expects the world's data centres alone will devour up to 651 terawatt-hours of electricity in the next year. That's nearly as much electricity as Canada's entire energy sector produces.
And it's just the beginning.
Andrae's calculations, published in the International Journal of Green Technology, suggest data centres could more than double their power demands over the next decade. He projects computing will gobble up 11 per cent of global energy by 2030 and cloud-based services will represent a sizeable proportion of that.
"This will become completely unsustainable by 2040," Andrae wrote.....MUCH MORE
So, what's driving the increased demand for data? Streaming video is currently the biggest culprit, with platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video eating up 60.6 per cent of all internet traffic, according to network analytics firm Sandvine, headquartered in Waterloo, Ont. And streaming video usage is only growing....
Headline from and HT to: Slashdot
We've noted this problem over the years. Here's a version from 2011, before streaming really got going:
Google: "Examining the impact of clean energy innovation" (GOOG)
Google is one of the largest energy users* in the world, so large that they are embarrassed to say how much electricity they consume.And one from 2007:
The Goog will not build a data center in California because of the cost of electricity.
The company has made something on the order of $3/4 billion in clean/green/alt energy investments, some of it in decidedly staid technology. Here they appear to be forecasting breakthroughs.
Google is also one of the largest lobbyists on Capitol Hill.**
See no Evil, Hear no Evil and Evil*
* Bob Dole commenting on the three ex-presidents and then-current
office-holder Ronald Reagan:
"History buffs probably noted the reunion at a Washington party a few weeks ago of three ex-presidents: Carter, Ford and Nixon-See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Evil." Here's a photo."Don't be evil." Google's informal corporate motto.
Search Giants Guard Carbon Footprint Data
Jun 15 2007
At the Climate Savers Computing Initiative
press conference earlier this week, Google vp for operations Urs Holzle
declined to reveal the company’s overall greenhouse gas emissions when
the question was asked by a Forbes’ reporter, according to a Green Wombat article. “Our carbon footprint is actually not that big…but we’re not quite ready to tell you what we’re doing.”“Our carbon footprint is too close to information that is competitive,” Google energy strategist Bill Weihl told Green Wombat during a post-press conference chat. Google, according to the article, worries that competitors could reverse engineer its greenhouse gas data to figure out how many servers and data centers it operates.
From Environmental Leader
