[32919] in North American Network Operators' Group
political ramifcations of internet power use
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (michael thomas guldan)
Mon Dec 18 17:47:21 2000
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 18:44:17 -0500
From: michael thomas guldan <michael@core.ele-mental.org>
To: nanog@merit.edu
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i'm actually a bit surprised that this didn't show up here first.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20001218/tc/power_struggle_1.html
basically there are competing views on how much energy the internet
and it industries use.
a choice quote:
"Moving 2 megabytes of data on the Net, they said, requires the energy
equivalent of 1 pound of coal. And with hundreds of millions of new
digital devices, ranging from digital X-ray machines to Palm handheld
computers, getting plugged in, the future of our economy depends on
burning more fossil fuels, including coal, which produces 56 percent
of the electricity used in America. All those Net-related electronics
consume "up to 290 billion kWh [kilowatt-hours] of demand. That's about
8 percent of total U.S. demand," they wrote. "Add in the electric power
used to build and operate stand-alone [unnetworked] chips and computers,
and the total jumps to about 13 percent. It's now reasonable to project
that half of the electric grid will be powering the digital Internet
economy within the next decade."
--
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