Greenpeace Says the Internet Emits Too Much CO2

Pharmboy writes "A new report put out by Greenpeace argues that the IT sector is not doing enough to decrease reliance on 'dirty energy', saying the Internet, if it were treated as its own country, would be the 5th largest emitter of greenhouse gases. 'Many companies, the organization said, tightly guard data about the environmental impact and energy consumption of their IT operations. They also focus more on using energy efficiently than on sourcing it cleanly.' The report (PDF) doesn't mention how much CO2 is saved by telecommuting and higher corporate efficiency, however. So, exactly how 'green' or 'polluting' is the internet, really?"

Comments

Sick and Tired of Greenpeace bashing

[hellfire]

Okay look, if you want to bash on Greenpeace, bash on the facts and stop committing ad hominem attacks. How can we fix the global climate change if no one reads the original report and address that? The Slashdot summary and the linked article are both gravely insufficient.

The slashdot summary also is misleading:

"The report (PDF) doesn't mention how much CO2 is saved by telecommuting and higher corporate efficiency, however."

And yet the article itself address this in several learning points, the most important one is bolded below:

Data centres to house the explosion of virtual information
currently consume 1.5-2% of all global electricity; this is growing
at a rate of 12% a year.
The IT industry points to cloud computing as the new, green
model for our IT infrastructure needs, but few companies provide
data that would allow us to objectively evaluate these claims.
The technologies of the 21st century are still largely powered by
the dirty coal power of the past, with over half of the companies
rated herein relying on coal for between 50% and 80% of their
energy needs.
IT innovations have the potential to cut greenhouse gas
emissions across all sectors of the economy, but IT’s own
growing demand for dirty energy remains largely unaddressed by
the world’s biggest IT brands.

And what's worse, this isn't about telecommuting, it's about cloud computing! They are two different things that do not mean exactly the same thing! So the summary is basically diverting attention away from cloud computing, and the original report by Greenpeace directly admits there's no data here. Greenpeace did not willfully omit data, as the summary suggests. The fact that there is no data here is a problem for companies and the planet, not for Greenpeace's report!

And finally, to address your statement of "how does one choose a green energy resource." Answer: lots of ways
1) Vote for politicians that support and direct resources to green energy
2) Pick companies that only use green energy, in this case, cloud companies that use servers that are powered by green energy.
3) In the US, we have many states that have been trying to introduce energy competition where you can chose your energy generator. While most attempts are pretty woeful, we are trying to introduce "choice" to the masses.
4) Large companies in the US often have many choices. Some companies generate part or all of their own power, and some chose specifically where their power comes from if their physical plant is large enough and has certain requirements. We can influence this choice by choosing companies that chose green energy.

Re:FFS

[Nethemas the Great]

In looking at the report, there does not appear to be any condemnation about the technology per-se, rather its utilization, deployment, and transparency of same. It's pretty hard to make a case that we'd be better off without IT, and they aren't trying. They appear to simply being trying to highlight a presently overlooked problem area as they see it. It's about sourcing power from "dirty" sources, and the lack of publicly accessible data regarding IT energy policies. Neither of which seem all that unreasonable. This report on IT is barely a blip compared to their rebukes for the manufacturing industry.