The 10 million home Internet power drain

Worldwide Internet servers’ energy use is the equivalent of 10 million homes and growing rapidly. Time to do something about it.

According to the December 21st Wall Street Journal, there are now 28 million server computers in the world, most of them obviously in the developed countries, each drawing 400 watts of power. Assuming these run 24/7, these represent about 100 billion kilowatt-hours per year of energy consumption, with the attendant carbon dioxide emissions. The Journal reports that AMD, Intel and other chip makers are trying to do something about this, along with the federal Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency. If the average home uses 10,000 kilowatt-hour per year, this represents the power use of 10 million homes. Green building advocates need to look at other areas than buildings to curb power consumption, and this is one of them.

Posted by on 12/22/2006 at 03:31 PM