Tree felling and harmful industries are not the only threats to the planet. Surfing the net also causes harm and causes greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere. On the eve of World Earth Day, let’s talk about what a green internet is and how to become an eco-friendly user.
Data is the root of the problem
Every day you search for information on the Internet and open various sites. Your requests reach the servers where the necessary files are stor in a split second and return – the sites open on your computer.
No matter what time you send a search query, Yandex and Google will process it, and the sites you are looking for will open. To ensure that you have constant access to information, the servers where it is stor work seven days a week: 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
And ultimately, it all comes down to data or more precisely
To processing it. Every web page or online game is essentially data that nes to be constantly stor and serv on demand. This is provid by data centers, or DPCs, which are rooms where servers and network equipment are locat. There, ventilation is constantly running to protect against dust and a cooling system. DPCs are sort of the “brains” of the Internet. If you are interest in how they work, you can read a detail article on our blog.
US experts have calculat that each of the world’s largest data centers requir more than 100 megawatts of power in 2020—the same amount ne to provide electricity to 80,000 households.
All the devices we use account for 3.7% of greenhouse emissions. By 2040, this figure will grow to 14%, according to the International Energy Agency.
Energy Distribution Statistics
Power Distribution in Data Centers
This is how surfing the web leaves not only a history in your browser, but also a carbon footprint in the real world.
How the Internet is Going Green
The first steps towards “greening” the Internet were taken by scientists from the American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. In 2005, they set an ambitious goal and achiev it – to ruce energy consumption by 50% by improving Internet standards. The point is that a device with Green Ethernet support checks the connectors and disconnects them from the power supply if the device is not in use. And the smart Internet also determines the signal strength bas on the length of the cable.
Major router manufacturers have jump on the eco-friendly bandwagon and are producing energy-efficient equipment.
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Since a significant portion of the electricity in data centers is spent on cooling equipment, they began to be built in northern countries:
Google has convert a paper mill in Finland into a data center and is using seawater from the bay for cooling.
Yandex also built a data center in Finland
An the waste heat is f into the heating system and provides heating to a nearby city, rucing its carbon footprint.
The desire to use the Internet in an environmentally friendly way has spread to almost all its spheres. For example, designers from London work on the website of a large coffee company: they simplifi the design and navigation, compress the images. The “slimm down” resource became more environmentally friendly, and emissions were ruc from 2.69 g to 0.08 g of CO2 per page load.
Example of an ecological website
Eco-friendly website of the British company Cafédirect
And a journalist from Barcelona made a website that runs on solar energy. He plac the batteries on the balcony of his apartment. On many sunny days, the website works smoothly; on cloudy days, it switches off. At night, the website shows how much “charge” is left in percentage.
Solar Power Website
On his website, Chris De Decker writes about ecology and technologies that make the world a better place
They even develop an eco-friendly search engine:
Ecosia uses only renewable energy, and the company’s employees use profits to plant one tree for every search query.
Every search query in an eco-friendly introduction to data structures search engine is equal to one plant tree
However, no matter how hard eco-activists try, Covid and the subsequent remote work have shown that humanity is not yet ready for a “green” Internet. In 2020, the World Wide Web became 40% more popular, which l to additional costs – 42.6 million megawatt-hours of electricity.
How to Make the Internet Greener and Ruce Your Carbon Footprint
Every person on the planet who uses the Internet can ruce their carbon footprint. This does not require dancing with tambourines – simple steps will be the most effective:
Turn off your camera during video conferences. 1 hour in Zoom — more than 150 g of CO2. The same amount would be releas by burning half a liter of gasoline. If you really want to see the interlocutor and be the center of attention, you can turn on the camera during the presentation and immiately turn it off after.
Tidy up your virtual shelves. Are you sure you ne to store those 50 graduation photos on Odnoklassniki? You can keep the 1-2 best ones and ruce the load on the server, and at the same time ruce CO2 emissions.
Use emoticons instead of stickers and don’t spam messages
One long message will cost the planet less than ten short ones — the volume of each weighs about 0.014 g of CO2. Stickers are more harmful phone number my than emoticons — review your collections. In case of important negotiations, you can keep your favorite sticker pack with cats, but it’s better to delete the rest.
Ruce the brightness of your monitor. This will ruce power consumption.
Sort out your email. The average cost of one email is 4 g of CO2. If you’ve been wanting to unsubscribe from unwant mailings for a long time, now is the time. At the same time, clean out your folders and, the next time you send a letter, think about whether it’s really necessary.
Download movies and music. Downloading mia to your device can ruce the load on the server because you only get the data once.
