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THE INTERNET ITSELF IS NOT A BIG ENERGY USER
Report Finds the Technology Has Modest Appetite for Extra Power, Thanks to Existing Communications Infrastructure
In May 1999, Forbes magazine published an article arguing that the Internet has become a major energy consumer because it supposedly requires a great deal of electricity to run the computers and other pieces of hardware that make the Internet economy work. ("Dig more coal-the PCs are coming," May 31, 1999). The authors of the article significantly overestimated the energy consumption of most critical pieces of equipment, according to a number of leading energy analysts. Indeed, the Center for Energy & Climate Solutions believes Forbes has the story almost completely backwards.
One reason energy intensity improved so slowly from 1987 through 1996 is that businesses purchased thousands of computers and other information technology equipment that consumes electricity without generating offsetting productivity gains. The Internet, however, changed all that. One reason for its rapid take-off is that the Net exploits existing infrastructure without drawing much additional power.
Worse, the Forbes authors also have their basic energy facts wrong. They said a "typical computer and its peripherals require about 1,000 watts of power." In fact, the average PC and monitor use about 150 watts of power, which dips to 50 watts or less in sleep mode. New flat screens use about a quarter of the energy of traditional video display terminals with cathode ray tubes. Printers and peripherals are usually shared by multiple users, and don't increase this average very much. Laptops, a key growth segment, are particularly low energy users; newer models sometimes use less than 30 watts.
Since new PCs tend to be more efficient than the ones they replace - today's PC industry has become largely a replacement business - companies are unlikely to see corporate energy consumption from computers rise sharply. For some it may even decline. Companies like Pratt & Whitney have instituted programs to cut the energy consumption of their computer systems.
New Study by Federal Energy Lab Quantifies Forbes Errors
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) examined the Forbes numbers and found they overestimated the electricity used by the Internet by a factor of eight. Large errors were found in every category, including the calculations for energy used by major dot-com companies, Web servers, Internet routers, telephone switches and the PCs used in both homes and business.
The Forbes piece claims that from 1996 to 1997, the increase in electricity for all computers used on the Internet totaled more than 1.5 percent of all U.S. electricity. Yet total electricity consumption for all purposes grew just under less than 1.4 percent in that time. Forbes thus implies that the rest of the economy had no growth in electricity consumption (despite four percent growth).
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