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cinn -> RE: odd- the Internet saving energy (2/14/2008 11:23:45 AM)
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quote:
Around 1995, the use of the internet began to increase significantly. Remarkably, from 1996 to 2001, energy intensity fell by an average of 2.9% annually. This trend has continued since 2001 at a pace of 2.4% annually, with half of it being attributed to technology gains.
Cause doesn't equal effect. "Technology gains" is also rather vague. Cars are a lot more efficient - are they technology?
At the same time, there is a lot more technology - more mobile-phone cell towers, computers, bigger CRT and plasma televisions, for example.
quote:
Energy intensity is a measurement of the quantity of energy required to produce one dollar of output and is a good indicator of overall energy efficiency.
All you can really infer is a qualitative judgement from this "energy intensity" - it's a rather pointless thing to measure in. The increased use of wind/solar power would lower it as well, and by (I should think) several orders of magnitude more than people using their cars less and their internets more.
Yet it might be true - conceptually it's a very believable hypothesis [as opposed to a theory]. That said I really can't see the effect being particularly measurable over the noise in any statistics you could try and collect, due to the small scale of the changes in comparison with noise from other savings, and general trends in usage (for example, computers use several times the power they did 8 years ago).
Also very difficult to say "this reduction in consumption is from people not driving to the newsagent" or whatever - again I'd have thought any such savings would be completely lost against the greater changes from, e.g., people switching to 8W fluourescent bulbs from 60W incandescent ones, boiling the kettle with only the amount of water required, getting double glazing, buying a more efficient car, and so on.
IMO a fairly unmeaningful [not meaningless!] study. By that I mean it works well as a thought exercise, but not so well when you attempt to take it beyond the conceptual stage. In the same way, I can say with certainty: "People using the internet instead of driving to the movie-rental shop to get movies means that they are polluting a wider area." Think about it -- the internet routing equipment all along the route from whoever you download a movie from and you has to have power. ;)
Where was I... so yes, nice idea, but I don't really see the point of the article sounding as if using the net will save the planet and take away that guilt. It will and it really wont - it's not a particularly energy efficient system, in itself.
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