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Computer Factories Are the Energy Hogs
coondoggie writes "The main idea behind saving energy in the high-tech world has been to buy newer, more energy efficient devices, but researchers say that may be the wrong way to look at the issue, since as much as 70% of the energy a typical laptop will consume during its life span is used in manufacturing the computer (abstract). More energy would be conserved by reducing power used in the manufacturing of computers, rather than reducing only the amount of energy required to operate them, say researchers from Arizona State University and Rochester Institute of Technology."
I'm more interested in the battery life then total energy savings!
And of course if it requires less power to manufacture, then it is less expensive to produce. Thus the prices of consumer electronics would drop. Wait for it... wait for it.... Bwahahahahahahahaha! Oh I just cracked myself up. The only difference we'd see is a little green sticker on the box where the OEM is bragging about saving the environment or something.
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Apart from the weasely "as much as"; interesting that laptops are being compared, knowing that they have much lower power consumption (on average) than desktops while requiring almost the same amount of manufacturing.
As a quick back-of-an-envelope calculation; a 100W computer, used for 5 hours a day, 6 days a week for 5 years uses 780kWh of electricity. At current approximate UK prices that's £125 ($200 US). If computer manufacturing uses a significant fraction of that amount of power, then there is already a BIG incentive for the manufacturers to use less. If you tell them "you should use less of this thing that costs you money!" they will likely reply "well, duh", or if current trends continue they'll say "well, as part of our Greener World Of Tomorrow Plan, we're actively trying to reduce..."
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I've often wondered why I never hear that mentioned when people talk about clean energy. How much energy and resources go into making a single solar panel or wind turbine? Anyone?
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The part you are supposed to care about is when you own and use it, not how it was made -- that is a matter that happens before it gets to you, so it doesn't concern you. Now, when I am saving energy, do I need to wear a green rubber band on my wrist? I've got this white one, yellow one, pink one... everyone needs to know what a great person I am.
Only if you're throwing away an older device for the sole purpose of saving money. A newer laptops cost will far exceed the difference in the cost to run it over its lifetime.
Also, consider the incremental effects. One doesn't get to a Chevy Volt in one step from a 1969 Mustang. Each step along the path of producing productrs for less energy requires that someone buy those products to pay for the next stage. Otherwise, we'd all still be driving 1969 Mustangs and the Prius would have never been built.
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This isn't really a consumer issue. There's no easy way for a purchaser to determine how much energy went into creating a computer, on the other hand, the amount of electricity used by the device however is easily determined and verifiable independently. Plus the purchasers pays the cost of running the machine as a separate cost, while the cost of the energy to produce the device in bundled in the purchase price. That's why people look more at how much power the computer uses (when they look at all).
Reducing the energy required to produce computers is essentially a manufacturer concern and they should already be working on that as a competitive cost advantage. I would guess it's probably not happening because most of these items are manufactured in countries that heavily subsidize their power systems and thus encourage waste by not requiring users to pay the full cost of the power they use. You want to reduce the power wasted during the production of goods? Stop subsidizing power usage and make sure the full costs are bore by the manufacturers. That's one of the reasons why a carbon tax would be disastrous. Companies will adapt to the tax and focus their efforts on more efficient production.
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Please stop propagating lies.
It is not the same with the Prius. At least not as far as energy consumption is concerned.
In case of a car the energy consumption in manufacturing is on average an order of magnitude smaller than the energy consumption during its use. We are talking 10% of total consumption vs more than 80%. You can refer to page 10 of these notes (pdf) to see the figures for an average family car.
In case of assessing energy impact of various stages of product manufacturing common sense will never help you. You just have to do the calculations.
Keeping the computer for as long as it works is a good idea, absolutely. In my limited experience, though, a laptop really isn't made to last much longer then the typical 3-4 years they get used.
I've always "used up" my laptops the past decade or so. I have big machines at work for the heavy lifting, and any decent laptop made the last ten years is enough for my surfing, writing and so on. I'm a heavy user, admittedly, but so far my track record is 3-4 years.
The screen dims and grows red as the (non-replaceable) backlight starts to go. The keyboard becomes mushy, keycaps fade and keys and trackpads start failing from accumulated damage from spilled liquids, dust and debris. The disk starts to fail, connectors may wear out and the battery max charge creeps toward zero. Any one of those may be fixed individually, but you don't pay for a new disk, keyboard or battery for a computer that's already slowly failing in other ways.
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I think most greens tend to miss the amount of energy consumed by the industrial sector. Considering that it consumes more energy than residential and commercial combined, it's not surprising that the amount of energy used by a laptop over its lifetime is less than what it takes to manufacture it.
The energy usage by the industrial sector is why energy sources like solar and wind aren't acceptable. It's the industrial sector that drives the majority of the base load for power demands. There's nothing quite like, "Yeah, there's not enough wind today to generate enough power for us to run our industrial machines. We have to send you home today early. Also, you're not getting paid for the time you should have been here if we had power."
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Incidentally, it costs about a thousand gallons of gas worth of energy to build a new Prius. Depending on the mpg of your gas guzzler, it can take as little as 25,000 miles to pay off the energy cost of building the Prius.
That's the case when the energy of building a new one is more than the double of the energy consumed by the total lifespan of the laptop. (remember that 70% is used to manufacture, 30% to operate it). Even if a newer one consumes zero energy, the manufacturing process will offset that.
As a mechanical engineer, I can tell you that bending, cutting or melting metal requires a LOT of energy. Try manufacturing a screw from a piece of metal using just simple tools and you will understand it.
If you want precision, like in a processor chip, the process becomes much less energy efficient.
Plastics are much cheaper to handle; I have no idea about sylicon though.
Just tax energy use more and energy use goes down. And don't forget to close the corporate loopholes.
Much more important is to close the personal loopholes, to avoid situations like in California, where "deregulation" meant keeping retail prices regulated at artificially low values.
Only problem is, the politicians who make those regulations are elected by the people who use that electricity. The simpler solution is doing exactly what they did: increase regulation and call it "deregulation", that way everyone is happy. Until they run out of electricity.
Otherwise, we'd all still be driving 1969 Mustangs and the Prius would have never been built.
It was proven some time ago that it is more environmentally friendly to keep old gas guzzlers on the road than it is to replace them with a new car simply due to the pollution and energy hits of the manufacturing process. Even so more with hybrids and electric cars using Li-On battery packs that need changing every 5 years. The increased fuel economy and lower emissions were not enough to offset the emissions and parts required to keep the older car running for the lifetime of the newer one.
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What productivity increase? When it comes to the most common use of computers, the office and normal home use (email, documents, web browsing, listening to music), performance ceased to be an issue over half a decade ago which is why Netbooks and Net tops got away with using a new CPU design slower than that of the old Pentium-M series. A faster CPU cannot make the internet come to your computer any faster or you type a document any quicker.
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I suspect they probably are looking at the total energy costs to, e.g. extract raw materials from the ground, transport them, refine them, transport them again, manufacture them into finished product (potentially with additional shipping as individual chips and components get shipped from suppliers to the final OEM), manufacture and testing at the final oem, then transport the laptop and packaging to the final customer.
If you look at that entire 'lifecycle', I would absolutely NOT be surprised to find that $120 of a $500 laptop is energy costs.
However, the rule of thumb you give is a very good one - if you won't pay for the costs of the upgrade in energy savings (or productivity increases for the same energy spent, which is basically energy savings), then you probably aren't saving enough energy to offset the energy costs of the piece of equipment.
Because, in a very real sense, if you are buying a competitively priced item (that is, doesn't have very high margins) cost is pretty representative of the energy that went into making something. That rule of thumb doesn't apply to luxury goods like Mac's, Sports Cars, etc. which have high margins, but does for anything with tight margins.
Well, obviously the solution is more unions!
Just tax energy use more and energy use goes down. And don't forget to close the corporate loopholes.
Much more important is to close the personal loopholes, to avoid situations like in California, where "deregulation" meant keeping retail prices regulated at artificially low values.
Only problem is, the politicians who make those regulations are elected by the people who use that electricity. The simpler solution is doing exactly what they did: increase regulation and call it "deregulation", that way everyone is happy. Until they run out of electricity.
You seem to have missed the entire point of the article you linked to.
The only effect of the still-regulated retail price was to stick the utilities with enormous bills instead of the consumers. As the article clearly states, the cause of the mess was not the regulated retail price, it was the unregulated price charged by the producers. They figured out that they could make more money by artificially limiting supply (which they accomplished by collectively taking something like 30-40% of power plants in California off-line at the same time for "regularly scheduled maintenance") than they could by actually generating enough power to meet demand. And that is exactly what they did. It was 100% a result of the generators taking advantage of deregulation, and literally colluding to screw over the public. Had the retail price been deregulated as well, the only difference would have been that the utilities would just have passed the extortion-level rates onto their customers instead of getting stuck with the enormous bill - but it was largely their own fault, as they participated in the artificial power shortage as well (in an attempt to force complete deregulation through, claiming that it was the result of partial deregulation that we had rolling blackouts).
No. The more energy efficient a product is, the higher the ratio of energy used to manufacture it to the energy used to run it. This holds even if it takes the same amount of energy to make the more efficient product. It even holds if it takes 10% less energy to make a 20% more efficient product. Most products use far more energy over their lifetimes than it took to produce them. A one-dollar light bulb can consume $30 of electricity, for example. Even if it takes five times more energy to make a fluorescent light bulb, it can't take more than $5 of electricity to make, but it can save over $20 dollars of electricity compared to an incandescent because it uses one quarter the amount of energy to produce the same amount of light.
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