Holistic carbon impact of internet

thornet / carbon-neutral-internet

A place to document learning, projects and ideas for a carbon neutral internet.

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Holistic carbon impact of internet #1

Open thornet opened 5 years ago

thornet commented 5 years ago

Is there any research about the whole impact of mobile devices vs towers vs datacenters on carbon emissions?
Any studies about aggregate power draw of a few billion mobile devices?
Possibly include side-effects of ubiquitous internet usage like the rise of the battery pack

Consider end-to-end measurements like the YouTube article covered.

Look at the cumulative impact rather than just the datacenters, as there might other avenues of action.

HT @autonome!

leecolleton commented 5 years ago

Be cautious with this accounting, the development of lithium battery tech is allowing electrification of transportation and increasing powergrid storage. It may be more productive to account for carbon intensity of computing at the datacenter level to show internet / mobile users the footprint of their own usage habits.

It would be useful to have an indicator of grams carbon internet next to the battery and network icons which could expand for further details similar to battery and network usage.