Industry News

It takes ALOT of energy to power the Internet

If you dont know today is blog action day, you can find more about the day itself by following the link. I decided to post about the Energy Cost of the internet because one constantly hears about cars and their vast shortcomings in terms of efficiency but you never hear about the energy cost of the Internet and computers in general.

So What is the cost?

While the number in that AMD ad is an estimate and very biased it is accurate in showing just how much money is lost by simply having an inefficient computer. Don’t worry too much about your personal computer increasing your electric bill as long as you use the correct power saving features. For the majority of the cost dollar and kwh wise is with datacenters that have rooms full of server racks. In order to power all those computers and more so to keep them cool is a very expensive process. According to a study done by the EPA, the cost to run the US servers and data centers for the year 2006 was 61 billion kilowatt-hours(1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption) or 4.5 billion dollars. Based on current trends this number will only increase and is expected to double by 2011. Not to mention that this study doesn’t include datacenters and servers outside the US which are growing at a far greater rate especially with the modernisation of China.

What can I do?
Luckily the major players in the computer/internet industry have already taken the initiative to move towards greener not only cause it’s better for the environment but also cause its better for the bottom line. If you use a computer I would strongly recommend looking into the two main initiatives and following their requirements to become greener.

Climate Savers- This initiative is focused mainly on getting individuals to use the power saving settings and for companies and individuals to buy more power efficient computers.

The Green Grid- This organization is primarily if you own or operate a large server or datacenter. They have alot of information dealing with making datacenters more efficient and thus cheaper.

As a webmaster or server owner you can also help the initiative by only hosting or buying servers that have a good Energy Star rating.

Some Unrelated Green Information

• Fastest Green car
• The greenest blog
• A green Magazine

If you have any other ideas to go in this green list, please leave a comment.

I hate the environment why should I care?
One word, Money, you didn’t think it was called going green because of the trees did you. Re-read the part in the first paragraph about 4.5 billion dollars

If you run or know of a hosting company that meets the energy star rating, please leave a link to it in the comments.