SUSTAINABILITY

By Annie Groth

November 22, 2020

You are curious about digital policy, sustainability, and the risks to ethical technological development. You find a cool initiative--it’s called the Institute for the Internet & the Just Society, and you decide to check out their website. You click. You emit 2.42 grams of CO2. 

Before closing down this article due to newfound environmental guilt, consider why the internet is polluting. On a basic level, running websites and other digital tools require energy. Coal, petroleum, wind, or solar energy have different emissions factors, and the internet is far from being green. 

If we compare the global information-communications-technology (ICT) system to the aviation sector, the former consumes around 50% more energy. Energy, nonetheless, is not all the same. While aviation relies on oil, ICT systems need electricity. 

In fact, these ecosystems need significant amounts of electricity. In 2013, the world’s ICT system consumed an estimated 1,500 TWh of electricity. This was the equivalent of Japan’s and Germany’s combined electrical consumption. In order to understand how quickly electricity demand is growing, the same amount of energy the world’s ICT system used was equivalent to the world’s entire electricity consumption in 1985. 

Energy: the internet’s biggest carbon source

While the amount of energy ICT systems consume may seem absurd, the real problem is not so much quantity as it is quality. The International Energy Association estimates that 67% of the world’s power generation came from combustible fuels in 2017. Among the sources of electricity, over a third comes from coal. 

This means our networks, storage services, and production lines need to source better electricity. Take, for example, Low-Tech Magazine. Its website is entirely solar-powered and runs on a mini-computer with about the same processing capacity of a smartphone. The website is complete with a three-day weather forecast; because some days are cloudy, you may not be able to access it. 

According to the Magazine’s editor, Kris De Decker, “because a web redesign was long overdue -- and because we try to practice what we preach -- we decided to build a low-tech website that meets our needs and abides by our principles.” De Decker seems to be on track. His website is cleaner than 80% of all other websites online. 

But expecting every website to be renewably powered is not feasible. While there is not enough renewable energy to power the internet, certain websites and apps have begun committing to cleaner energy sources. Greenpeace compiles a report for comparison. You can feel good watching a video on Facebook and Youtube. Netflix? Not so much. And if you want to listen to music, stay away from Soundcloud. 

These “cleaner” websites may not necessarily use renewables, but they can complement their efforts by offsetting their carbon emissions or through advocacy work. For example, 67% of Whatsapp’s energy in 2017 was clean energy, but Greenpeace believes the company could do better in terms of advocating for change.  The company receives an “A” overall. 



Where is the internet’s pollution?

While energy is the internet’s dirty (big) secret, the part of the IT sector which most consumes energy is end-use devices. This may seem self-evident--of course, the energy needed to run laptops, phones, and tablets would add up. Though what is most apparent is that the structure needed to operate our electronic devices increasingly accounts for its energy consumption.

For example, electricity for IT networks and data centers accounted for half of all consumption in 2017. Five years earlier, they only amassed 35% of energy consumption. Clearly, understanding how the internet is structured and where energy demands are predicted to grow are important to curb emissions. 

Just as ICT’s energy consumption is dominated by coal, a single data center is a monopoly for storage. If at this point you are thinking of a large, computer-stacked block in the Silicon Valley, China’s Zhongguancun, or even Tel Aviv, think again. Big storage is in Loudoun County, Virginia. 

Over 70% of global internet traffic goes through Loudoun County on a daily basis. In Loudoun County, almost 6 million square feet are farmlands; 10 million square feet are data centers in operation, with another 3 million being projected. 

Almost all of Loudoun County’s energy is provided by a utility company called Dominion Energy. The company boost itself in leading the way towards clean energy. It has the largest off-shore wind farm owned by an American company and ranks third for largest solar portfolio. Only three years earlier, electricity sourced through coal was six times larger than through solar and wind power combined. 



Looking ahead: a cleaner internet

It is no coincidence that Dominion Energy and companies like Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft set net-zero emissions targets. On one hand, committing to sustainability helps a company: it can increase brand value, attract new customers and investors, as well as aid in productivity. But on a grander scale, IT companies are large polluters, and they must pay the price of carbon. 

Consumers already think of carbon emissions for several products: conscious consumers eat less red meat, consider offsetting flights, or buy fewer new clothes. Perhaps it is now time to put pressure on another good and consider the footprint of the tech companies you buy and use from.