ELECTRONIC pollution, or e-pollution, is the environmental damage that comes from the constant heating and cooling down in facilities that are referred to as data centres.
Data centres are where online information is collected, processed, stored, and exchanged.
Supercomputers in these facilities are constantly running and tend to get very hot. This can result in a meltdown of not only the computers but also of the Internet. Companies could lose billions of dollars if the Internet goes down, even if it were just for a few minutes.
Most of the pollution arises from all the cooling systems set in place to make sure the computers do not overheat. It has been reported that data centres can ‘consume up to 100 times more energy than a standard office building’.
Due to the current pandemic situation, a record drop in global carbon emissions was registered in 2020. However, a shift to remote working and more at-home entertainment caused significant environmental impact due to how Internet data is stored and transferred around the world.
A team of researchers in the US analysed the water and land footprints associated with Internet infrastructure in addition to carbon footprints.
They found that about an hour of videoconferencing or streaming roughly emits 150-1,000gm of carbon dioxide (about four litres of petrol burned from a car emits about 8,887gm) to contain which requires 2-1/2 litres of water and a land area nearly the size of an iPad Mini.
Leaving your camera off during a web call can reduce these footprints by 96 per cent. Streaming content in standard definition rather than in high definition while using apps such as Netflix or Hulu also could reduce the carbon footprints by about 86pc.
Several countries have reported at least 20pc surge in Internet traffic since March 2020. If the trend continues through the end of 2021, this alone would require a forest of about 71,600 square miles – almost 200 times bigger than the land area of Bahrain – to sequester the emitted carbon. The additional water needed in the processing and transmission of data would also be enough to fill more than 300,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, while the resulting land footprint would be about double the size of Bahrain now.
The carbon, water and land footprints associated with each gigabyte of data used in YouTube, Zoom, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and 12 other platforms, as well as in online gaming and miscellaneous web surfing were also estimated. It was found that, the more video used in an application, the larger the footprints. Because data processing uses a lot of electricity, and any production of electricity has carbon, water, and land footprints, reducing data download reduces environmental damage.
Banking systems always tell us the positive environmental impact of going paperless, but no one tells us the benefit of turning off your camera or reducing your streaming quality. So, without our consent, these platforms are increasing our environmental footprints.
The team gathered data for Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, the UK and the US.
Even though Germany, a world renewable energy leader, has a carbon footprint well below the world median, its water and land footprints are much higher. Obviously, these estimates are based on publicly available data for each platform and country and are rough, since they’re only as good as the data made available by service providers and third parties. But it is believed that the estimates still help to document a trend and bring a more comprehensive understanding of environmental footprints associated with Internet use. In view of these surges, there is a hope now for a higher transparency to guide new policies towards Internet use and its environmental aspects.
Dr Adnan Younis,
Assistant Professor of Physics,
College of Science,
University of Bahrain
&uuid=(email))