Have you got the energy?
Building a website feels like a non-harmful activity doesn’t it? You’re doing something creative, pulling in your ideas, and thinking about things.
Unfortunately, there is an energy cost for everything to do with the Internet. Quite apart from the energy that your own PC or Mac uses, there is of course the servers that you connect to on the Internet.
Every website and web based application sits on a server in a data centre somewhere. (A data centre is basically a large room or warehouse with racks and racks of servers, and a very fast Internet connection). Not only do servers consume a lot of energy themselves, they also require lots of other supporting equipment, such as air conditioning. And of course they’re on 24/7. It was recently claimed that every Google search uses as much energy as boiling a kettle.
Whilst that myth was dispelled, there’s no doubt that web based activities require a lot of energy – in fact recent estimates say that the Internet uses up to 5% of all the world’s electricity.
In fact, some of the biggest Internet firms use eye-watering amounts of servers and power.
Google itself is said to have between 35 and 40 data centres with around 1 million servers. Whilst we don’t know how many Microsoft have, they are said to be increasing their servers by around 20,000 per month.
The more servers you put in a data centre, and the more densely you pack them, the more air conditioning you need to keep everything the right temperature. The amount of energy a large data centre (DC) needs is equivalent to that of an aluminium smelter. Microsoft have just completed a $500m DC near Chicago requires three electricity sub stations to keep it going.
Such are the cooling needs of large data centres that their location is now almost always decided by a source of cheap power. This is why so many locate next to the Columbia River, whose flowing water can be used as a source of power and cooling.
In what is a logical next step, Microsoft itself is scouting locations in Siberia so it can make use of the freezing temperatures. And maybe now due to its banking collapse, Iceland is marketing itself as perfect DC country due to its geothermal energy supply and a chilly clime.
WebEden for its part is run on servers located in a data centre in Paris. Not much chance of help from the weather there! And in terms of environmental impact, we offset the carbon emissions from the energy used by all WebEden websites using COCO2 carbon offset system.
Does any of this change the amount of time you want to spend online or building a website? Leave us a comment below.