Photographs by CONNIE ZHOU/Google
dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. One indication of the Internet’s environmental impact comes from a 2014 study by Greenpeace International, “Clicking Clean: How Companies Are Creating the Green Internet,” which estimates that the “rapid growth of the cloud and our use of the Internet have produced a collective electricity demand that would currently rank in the top six if compared alongside countries; that electricity demand is expected to increase by 60 percent or more by 2020 as the online population and our reliance on the Internet steadily increase.” While equating the energy usage of the cloud and the Internet to one of the world’s largest countries may seem startling, a comprehensive tally would be even bigger, says Gary Cook, lead author of the “Clicking Clean” study. “The sixth largest country estimate counts just the data centers and the telecom networks that connect each of the data centers—what we’re loosely calling the cloud,” says Cook. “That does not include devices. If we were to add the energy use associated with devices into
MAY/JUNE 2015
7