#[1]alternate [2]The Internet Eats Up Less Energy Than You Might Think

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The Internet Eats Up Less Energy Than You Might Think

  New research by two leading scientists says some dire warnings of
  environmental damage from technology are overstated.
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  An analysis published on Thursday suggests technology is not an
  environmental villain. One of the authors is Eric Masanet, a former
  researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
  An analysis published on Thursday suggests technology is not an
  environmental villain. One of the authors is Eric Masanet, a former
  researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.Credit...Erica
  Urech for The New York Times
  [16]Steve Lohr

  By [17]Steve Lohr
  June 24, 2021

  The giant tech companies with their power-hungry, football-field-size
  data centers are not the environmental villains they are sometimes
  portrayed to be on social media and elsewhere.

  Shutting off your Zoom camera or throttling your Netflix service to
  lower-definition viewing does not yield a big saving in energy use,
  contrary to what some people have claimed.

  Even the predicted environmental impact of Bitcoin, which does require
  lots of computing firepower, has been considerably exaggerated by some
  researchers.

  Those are the conclusions of a new analysis by Jonathan Koomey and Eric
  Masanet, two leading scientists in the field of technology, energy use
  and the environment. Both are former researchers at the Lawrence
  Berkeley National Laboratory. [18]Mr. Koomey is now an independent
  analyst, and [19]Mr. Masanet is a professor at the University of
  California, Santa Barbara. (Mr. Masanet receives research funding from
  Amazon.)

  They said their analysis, published on Thursday as a commentary
  [20]article in Joule, a scientific journal, was not necessarily
  intended to be reassuring. Instead, they said, it is meant to inject a
  dose of reality into the public discussion of technology’s impact on
  the environment.

  The surge in digital activity spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic, the
  scientists said, has fueled the debate and prompted dire warnings of
  environmental damage. They are concerned that wayward claims, often
  amplified by social media, could shape behavior and policy.

  “We’re trying provide some mental tools and guidelines for thinking
  about our increasingly digital lifestyles and the impact on energy
  consumption and the environment,” Mr. Masanet said.

  The headline on their analysis is “Does not compute: Avoiding pitfalls
  in assessing the internet’s energy and carbon impacts.”

  Exaggerated claims, the pair said, are often well-intentioned efforts
  by researchers who make what may seem like reasonable assumptions. But
  they are not familiar with fast-changing computer technology —
  processing, memory, storage and networks. In making predictions, they
  tend to underestimate the pace of energy-saving innovation and how the
  systems work.

  The impact of video streaming on network energy consumption is an
  example. Once a network is up and running, the amount of power it uses
  is much the same whether large amounts of data are flowing or very
  little. And steady improvements in technology decrease electricity
  consumption.

  In their analysis, the two authors cite information from two large
  international network operators, Telefónica and Cogent, which have
  reported data traffic and energy use for the Covid year of 2020.
  Telefónica handled a 45 percent jump in data through its network with
  no increase in energy use. Cogent’s electricity use fell 21 percent
  even as data traffic increased 38 percent.

  “Yes, we’re using a lot more data services and putting a lot more data
  through networks,” Mr. Koomey said. “But we’re also getting a lot more
  efficient very quickly.”

  Another pitfall, the authors say, is to look at one high-growth sector
  of the tech industry and assume both that electricity use is increasing
  proportionally and that it is representative of the industry as a
  whole.

  Computer data centers are a case study. The biggest data centers, from
  which consumers and workers tap services and software over the
  internet, do consume huge amounts of electricity. These so-called cloud
  data centers are operated by companies including Alibaba, Amazon,
  Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

  From 2010 to 2018, the data workloads hosted by the cloud data centers
  increased 2,600 percent and energy consumption increased 500 percent.
  But energy consumption for all data centers rose less than 10 percent.

  What happened, the authors explain, was mainly a huge shift of
  workloads to the bigger, more efficient cloud data centers — and away
  from traditional computer centers, largely owned and run by non-tech
  companies.

  In 2010, an estimated 79 percent of data center computing was done in
  traditional computer centers. By 2018, 89 percent of data center
  computing took place in cloud data centers.

  “The big cloud providers displaced vastly less efficient corporate data
  centers,” Mr. Koomey said. “You have to look at the whole system and
  take substitution effects into account.”

  The complexity, dynamism and unpredictability of technology development
  and markets, the authors say, make projecting out more than two or
  three years suspect. [21]They critiqued a [22]Bitcoin energy paper that
  projected out decades, based on what they said were old data and
  simplified assumptions — an approach Mr. Masanet called “extrapolate to
  Doomsday.”

  But Bitcoin, the scientists say, is something different — and a worry.
  The efficiency trends elsewhere in tech are blunted because Bitcoin’s
  specialized software churns through ever more computing cycles as more
  people try to create, buy and sell digital currency.

  “It’s a hot spot that needs to be watched very closely and could be a
  problem,” Mr. Masanet said.

  Much is unknown about cryptocurrency mining and its energy consumption.
  It uses specialized software and hardware, and secrecy surrounds the
  big centers of crypto mining in China, Russia and other countries.

  So estimates of Bitcoin’s energy footprint vary widely. Researchers at
  [23]Cambridge University estimate that Bitcoin mining accounts for 0.4
  percent of worldwide electricity consumption.

  That may not appear to be much. But all of the world’s data centers —
  excluding ones for Bitcoin mining — consume an estimated 1 percent of
  its electricity.

  “I think that’s a pretty good, high-value use of that 1 percent,” Mr.
  Koomey said. “I’m not sure the same is true for Bitcoin’s share.”

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