environmental impact of internet

1. Environmental Impact of Internet
Over the last two decades, the global culture has been transformed as a result
of the widespread adoption of computers in each and every arena of Human life.
This also facilitated increased dependency on data all across the globe. The key
societal and business functions have been thus brought into the digital realm, and
there had been a remarkable increase in interconnectivity and exchange of data with
the advance of the internet. The Internet is facilitating grand strides in collaboration
and communication. The technology is progressing so fast that it had entered into
nearly every sphere of civil society.
Cloud Computing.
The world has also seen the rise of companies such as Google and Facebook
whose business models are built on the exchange and storage of vast amounts of
data, using the internet to make information available to end users worldwide. Most
recently, another technological development with likewise transformative and far
reaching impacts has occurred; namely, the paradigm of cloud computing and the
outsourcing of data storage and processing requirements by businesses,
governments, and other entities to data centres. Together, these processes have
driven the explosive growth in both networking and the data centre industry as
providers of data processing (servers), data storage (storage equipment), and
communications (network equipment), collectively referred to as ICT services over
Internet.
Increase in Power requirement
With the growth of this industry and the requirements f or data storage and
processing, there has also been a parallel increase in the power requirements
associated with the millions of servers and thousands of data centres now in
existence which is the main center of
various services offered in Internet.
Recognizing the important impact that
the provision of Internet has on the
environment and that this is steadily
rising with the increasing demand for
data and data management resulting
more carbon impact of computing.

2. Greenhouse gases
The rapid growth in the adoption of Internet as a main
facilit ator of the masses, the subsequent increases in
electrical requirements are also producing increases in
greenhouse gas emissions associated with electricity
generation, raising concerns in terms of the impact of the
sector in respect of its contribution to global climate change.
On the other hand there is a rapid enhancement of technologies into more
eco-savy. Older technologies like dialup and traditional wireline connections use 3.56
kWh per GB. Newer technologies including fiber and power lines use .77 kWh/GB,
while cable uses .72 kWh/GB and DSL sips a low .17 kWh/GB. These figures don’t
include the power consumption of the end-device like a laptop or a cell phone. Also
remember the measurement is energy per gigabyte of data, and newer networks
also transmit significantly more data than older networks. With "Moore's Law"
making CPUs exponentially faster and new tools like software virtualization allowing
one server to replace many, it was expected that a doubling of energy consumption
would result in many times more data being transferred. Various services available
in Internet also take care of the conventional environmental exploitations. For
example, purchasing music from iTunes or Amazon MP3 reduces carbon footprint to
a great extend since there are no waste materials produced like plastic cases, CDs,
or inserts for the CDs. Buying the whole album digitally is the perfect way to enjoy
the music without producing waste.
CO2 Emmission
Several recent studies and articles have shown that a simple Google search
can result in 1-10 grams of CO2 emissions. With an average 34,000 searches per
second in Google (2 million per minute; 121 million per hour; 3 billion per day; 88
billion per month, figures rounded), we are looking at up to more than 2000 tons of
greenhouse gas emissions per day. Unfortunately the 2000 ton figure refers only to
internet searches and all other services available in Internet is accounting for extra
Carbon footprint. Most computers create 40-80 grams of greenhouse gas emissions
per hour through their use of electricity (depending on electricity source and
computer type), so the aggregated greenhouse gas emissions just from computers is
quite sizable. US statistics of 2006, states that the internet accounts for 3 percent of
US electricity consumption and 2 percent of global CO2 emissions. According to a
recent study cited on CNN.com the internet will be producing 20 percent of the
world’s greenhouse gases within a decade.

3. WORLD INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION STATISTICS -2011
Internet Penetration
Population Internet Users Growth
World Regions Users (%
( 2011 Est.) Latest Data 2000-2011
Dec. 31, 2000 Population)
Africa 1,037,524,058 4,514,400 118,609,620 11.4 % 2,527.4 %
Asia 3,879,740,877 114,304,000 922,329,554 23.8 % 706.9 %
Europe 816,426,346 105,096,093 476,213,935 58.3 % 353.1 %
Middle East 216,258,843 3,284,800 68,553,666 31.7 % 1,987.0 %
North America 347,394,870 108,096,800 272,066,000 78.3 % 151.7 %
Latin America / Carib. 597,283,165 18,068,919 215,939,400 36.2 % 1,037.4 %
Oceania / Australia 35,426,995 7,620,480 21,293,830 60.1 % 179.4 %
WORLD TOTAL 6,930,055,154 360,985,492 2,095,006,005 30.2 % 480.4 %
The Internet has traditionally been viewed as a low-carbon impact alternative
to traditional activities (which use countless tons of paper and non-renewable
energy). The Internet's supporting infrastructure of web servers, data centers and
production materials (i.e. computers), however, is a huge waste and carbon-
intensive area of the economy. It was roughly 700 Billion kWh in 2010 which is
growing rapidly. Anti-virus software firm McAfee reports that the electricity needed
just to transmit the trillions of spam emails sent annually equals the amount required
to power over two million homes in the United States while producing the same level
of greenhouse gas emissions as more than three million cars.
e-Waste
In measuring the
environmental impact of the net, we
feel it is absolutely necessary to do a
full life-cycle measurement from day
one of computer production to the
first hit of on Internet. Raw material
extraction, material production, part
production and assembly all have
real environmental and human costs
at every part of the process. It's worth considering what happens to these Internet-
devices when they are obsolete. In 2008 National Geographic published an
extensive article on e-waste which publicized the numerious environmental and
human health concerns associated with the computing industry. E-Waste and other
life-cycle measurements are still rarely addressed in measuring the environmental
impact of the web.

4. E-waste comprises of discarded electronic appliances viz. waste electronic
goods, such as computers, televisions and cell phones, of which computers and
mobile telephones are disproportionately abundant because of their short lifespan.
The current global production of E-waste is estimated to be 20–25 million tonnes per
year, with most E-waste being produced in Europe, the United States and
Australasia. Miniaturisation and the development of more efficient cloud computing
networks, where computing services are delivered over the internet from remote
locations, may offset the increase in E-waste production from global economic
growth and the development of pervasive new technologies. E-waste contains
potential environmental contaminants, especially Pb, Sb, Hg, Cd, Ni, polybrominated
diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Burning E-waste may
generate dioxins, furans, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polyhalogenated
aromatic hydrocarbons (PHAHs), and hydrogen chloride.
Remedial measures
Various initiatives are now being geared up to
face this challenge. New high end processors being
launched have increased computing power, with low
energy demand. New energy efficient, Monitors with
less radiation and power consumption are available
in the market. New ways have been developed to
keep massive server farms cool. Server farms can
be located near hydroelectric facilities or other
sources of renewable energy and the can be built in
the Arctic Circle to take advantage of natural
cooling. Google is perhaps the world’s largest
internet company and it has taken several
methods to reducing its carbon footprint,
including installing massive solar panels to
power their server farm, with a complement of
several windmill farms in the exploration of
generating green energy. Various other
companies and internet service providers, who
cannot build their own renewable energy sources, are availing green energy credits.
Overall, there are plenty of ways of using online resources with reduced footprint.
Going green is a mindset and dedicating to it will help to discover new methods
which were never thought possible.