Comments on: Broadband may create energy crisis https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/broadband-may-create-energy-crisis/2008/11/30 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:56:02 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: Sepp Hasslberger https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/broadband-may-create-energy-crisis/2008/11/30/comment-page-1#comment-343056 Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:56:02 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=2182#comment-343056 I remember a discussion some months ago where participants wanted to know how much power the internet consumes in relation to the rest of the economy. Figures as high as 10 % were mentioned.

It is good to see that the research here found one half of a percent, possibly increasing to one per cent.

I would also like to comment on the view that “It has now become clear that the exponential growth of the Internet is not sustainable” expressed by the researcher.

The services that broadband offers (like internet based games or teleworking) would – it is true – increase the power consumption of the internet, but at the same time, I believe, they would significantly reduce power consumption associated with physically moving bodies from one place to another, such as commuting traffic and air travel. So before making a sweeping statement about the sustainability of the increase of broadband use, I believe both sides of that equation should be looked at.

]]> By: Marc Fawzi https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/broadband-may-create-energy-crisis/2008/11/30/comment-page-1#comment-342855 Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:26:01 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=2182#comment-342855 I don’t know for sure, but I would think the biggest cost in power consumption comes from the data centers that consume a ton of electricity just for cooling not from the telecom infrastructure (a Google-sized data center is bound to be much larger in its power consumption than the largest telecom peering hub)

Data centers that run Google.com, Yahoo.com, Amazon.com, eBay.com are the most massive power consumers.

Local energy production (from renewables) is always cheaper than producing energy centrally and then having to transport it to the data center. That’s why one or more of Google’s latest data centers are located right next to massive waterfalls. And that’s why P2P energy production and Smart Grid technologies will ultimately replace the existing centralized power distribution model, and will be the most natural fitting solution for the future P2P Internet/World Wide Mesh.

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