Page 64 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

48 R. MAXWELL AND T. MILLER

electricity needed to power this stuff will rise to 30% of global consumption
by 2022 and 45% by 2030. This includes about 80 billion dollars’ worth of
electricity wasted while these network devices are on “standby”
(International Energy Agency 2009).
Keep in mind that residential use refers to operational energy and not to
the energy consumed in the manufacturing stage of information and
communication technologies, or in the disposal and recycling stage. Energy
used in the manufacturing of laptops, for example, is 64% of the total used
in a laptop’s life-cycle—and this does not account for the energy used to
make chemicals and gases that go into the production of semiconductors
or the energy used to dispose or recycle them (Williams 2011).
In addition, enormous amounts of data pass daily through massive
networks and data centres—the ‘cloud’—now scattered across the globe.
Data centres’ energy demands rise at a steady pace, with business practices
that range from serious plans to reduce reliance on coal-fired energy to
widespread examples of waste and thoughtless energy management. At
current levels, cloud computing eats up energy at a rate somewhere
between what Japan and India consume (Greenpeace 2012). The envi-
ronmental impact of this networked culture depends on the type of energy
production used to power the grids—coal-fired power being the biggest
menace.
Recent life-cycle studies tell us that the biggest communications culprits
for unsustainable energy consumption are the wireless access providers that
link us to the network and cloud, estimating that 90% of the total energy
consumed by our networked devices is attributable to access providers—
this is not counting the energy used by the devices themselves (Centre for
Energy-Efficient Telecommunications 2013).
Green organizations would do their employees, allied activists and
supporters a great service by reminding them that smokestacks and pol-
lution accompany electricity needed for high-wattage operations of digital
networks, office equipment, video displays and digital living in general.
These are not environmentally benign technologies. Environmental orga-
nizations should publicize this fact and demonstrate how they address the
liabilities of their own institutional energy consumption.