Green Living: On the net

The internet age has broadened the horizons of many workshy members of the workforce.

It is now not only possible, but very easy to spend an entire day just, you know, "researching" subjects as diverse as penguins, picnic blankets and pop videos via the wonders of Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and so on.

So how environmentally friendly is the internet? The amount of electricity used to power the net, especially in controlling temperatures around sensitive equipment such as servers, is vast.

Although it's difficult to pin down, best guesses estimate that five per cent of the world's energy output goes into powering the net. This results in the internet contributing around two per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

So should we unplug our modems and turn back the clock? It isn't quite as simple as that. For one thing, it's difficult to quantify how much energy is saved by the internet - on posted mail which is sent as an email instead for example, or buying an album on download rather than a physical CD. There are also enormous social benefits of being better connected, which might contribute to fewer flights.

This is one genie that won't go back into the bottle. The benefits of the internet should vastly outweigh the environmental impact - though it is worth pondering the thought that spam emails sent in one year used up the same amount of electricity as would power 1.5million homes. So there's at least one efficiency saving which no-one would object to.

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