Carbon Impact of Web Surfing

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Last week CNN produced a couple of interesting stories about green IT. The first is a online story about the environmental impact of the Internet, and the second is a video segment about some of the actions tech companies are taking to reduce their carbon footprints. Some surprising tidbits from the stories:

• Every second someone spends browsing a web site generates 20 mg of CO2.
• In the aggregate, information technology is responsible for about 2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, which is roughly equivalent to the aviation industry.
• The amount of power needed to produce and deliver spam email in the United States annually generates the equivalent in greenhouse gasses of three million cars.
• Within a decade, the Internet will be generating 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gasses.
• In 2002, data centers emitted 76 million tons of CO2.

So the next time you might feel a pang of guilt about taking that flight from New York to LA, spare a thought for the impact of powering up your laptop and popping in your 3G modem for some wireless web surfing or email. You might be surprised at which activity is worse for the planet.

It’s not all bad news though. Data centers can take a lot of steps to reduce their carbon footprints. If you’re a Google user, Google’s Director of Climate Change and Energy Dan Reicher recently held a liveblog to answer questions from a UK newspaper about Google’s environmental efforts. One Google search emits 0.2 grams of C02. One round-trip car ride to the library (8km) is the equivalent of performing 10,000 Google searches, and one printed and distributed newspaper is the equivalent of 850 Google searches.