The Looming Internet Energy Crisis
If you think the virtual, online world helps reduce energy consumption in the real world (a topic we’ve touched on before here at Green Options Media), think again: a new study by management consulting firm McKinsey & Company provides scary insights into how Internet computing is devouring more and more power and spewing out more and more greenhouse gases.
Based on data from the Uptime Institute, a technology consulting company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the McKinsey report finds that, between 2000 and 2006, the amount of energy needed to power data centers doubled, and that consumption is likely to double again by 2012. In the U.S. alone, we would need to build 10 new power plants by 2010 just to meet the growing energy needs of this country’s data centers.
Scary news: Electronic waste is growing at three times the rate of other household waste, and at a higher toxicity. With the rapid and widespread use of computers and electronic technology in the past thirty years, the impact of all the heavy metals (arsenic, mercury, cadmium, copper, lead, etc.), batteries, plastics, LCD and other screens, etc. going into our landfills and water tables has yet to be determined.