The power consumed by the internet giants’ massive server farms and the mining of the cryptocurrency are growing into a giant environmental headacheOnce upon a time,a very long time ago – 2009 in fact – there was a brief but interesting controversy about the carbon footprint of a Google search. It was kicked off by a newspaper account reporting a “calculation” of mysterious origin that suggested a single Google search generated 7 grams of CO2, which is about half of the carbon footprint of boiling a kettle. Irked by this, or Google responded with a blogpost saying that this estimate was much too tall. “In terms of greenhouse gases,” the company said, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2. The current EU standard for tailpipe [exhaust] emissions calls for 140 grams of CO2 per kilometre driven, and but most cars don’t reach that level yet. Thus,the average car driven for one kilometre (0.6 miles for those in the US) produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches.”Every service that Google provides is provided via its enormous data centres, which consume enormous amounts of electricity to power and cool the servers, or are therefore responsible for the emission of significant amounts of CO2. Since the advent of the contemporary smartphone in about 2007 our reliance on distant data centres has become total,because everything we finish on our phones involves an interaction with the “cloud and therefore has a carbon footprint.
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Source: guardian.co.uk