How much does ICT contribute to global greenhouse emissions, what can users do to reduce their carbon footprint? How does this relate to other energy saving actions?

1. Google, Smartphones, Bitcoins – How
much energy is used
by ICT?
Oliver Deussen
Department of Computer and Information Science
University of Konstanz

2. 11,000 Scientists warn (5 Nov 2019)
• Use energy far more efficiently
• Apply strong carbon taxes
• Reduce methane and smut (carbon black)
• Stabilize global population
• End destruction of nature, restore forests and mangroves
• Eat mostly plants and less meat
• Reduce food waste
• Shift economic goals away from GDP growth
William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M Newsome, Phoebe Barnard, William R Moomaw,
World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency, BioScience, , biz088, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz088

3. Carbon Foodprint of ICT
• Data not very precise, depends heavily on source
• The Shift Project:
2013: 2.5% (Share of ICT in greenhouse gases emissions)
2019: 3.7%
• Ericsson study:
2010-2015: 1.4% being constant
but: without Entertainment and Media (1.2%)
• rough and safe estimate: >2% (similar to aviation transport)
https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/lean-ict-our-new-report
Malmodin, Jens & Lundén, Dag. (2018). The Energy and Carbon Footprint of the Global ICT and E&M Sectors 2010–2015.
Sustainability. 10.3390/su10093027.

4. Nature, 13.9.2018: How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity
But:

5. Nature, 13.9.2018: How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity

6. Why this potential increase?
Data Centers:
• Appearance of energy hungry activities
(eg., Bitcoin mining, Deep learning techniques)
Network Infrastructure:
• Increased volume due to smart phones and streaming
• Better infrastructure will be build in many countries
(move to 5G might even reduce energy levels...)
• Internet of things (many, many more connected devices)

7. Data centers: use 0.3% of global greenhouse emissions
Nature, 13.9.2018: How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity

8. Nature, 13.9.2018: How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity

9. Energy hungry activities
Bitcoin mining:
• Estimate: 0.33-0.5% of global greenhouse emissions
• Germany: 2%, electricity is 25% of total emissions, thus:
Bitcoin mining uses as much electricity as whole Germany
• Only possible in regions where electricity and cooling is cheap
• Waste of energy: many actors compute and only one receives
the next bitcoin
Nature, 13.9.2018: How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity

10. Deep learning:
• Carbon footprint of model training is probably not high today,
but it could be in the future.
• Carbon footprint of model inference is bigger
• Machine learning practitioners are wasting tons of resources on
redundant training
• Neural networks get bigger and more complicated to train
https://towardsdatascience.com/deep-learning-and-carbon-emissions-79723d5bc86e
Energy hungry activities

11. Emma Strubell, Ananya Ganesh, Andrew McCallum:
Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP, arxiv
(NLP, huge network...)

12. Streaming data is most of network data
~1% of global energy consumption

13. Internet of things

14. Internet of Things
But:
• IoT has the potential to reduce total energy consumption!
• Heating and cooling systems
• Mobility (transportation, autonomous cars, etc.)
• Smarter cities, smarter industries

15. https://www.eniday.com/en/sparks_en/building-management-energy/

16. What can I do?

17. Using Google, as bad as said?
• Google: largest consumer of carbon neutral electricity worldwide
• Has its own wind and solar parks, 100% green electricity
• Is rated “A” by Greenpeace (Clickgreen) with regards to energy
consumption
• One search query uses 0.3 Wh
(200 searches sum up to ironing a shirt)
• Much more problematic: the computer you use to perform the search
SWR Wissen: Faktencheck: Ökobilanz von Suchmaschinenen, 4.9.2018

18. Using your computer
• Desktop computer: 60-300 Watt, depending on hardware
• Biggest consumer: graphics board while gaming (up to 500W)
• Laptop: 30-70 Watt
• Screen saver: unnecessary, uses lots of energy
• Optimize sleep mode, screen brightness, turn computer off
And: don’t buy new hardware unless really necessary
Mills, N. & Mills, E. Energy Efficiency (2016) 9: 321. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-015-9371-1

19. 25% production
of ICT machines
Use your computer
and cell phone
longer!

20. Computer Gaming
• 1 Billion people play computer games worldwide
• Typical gaming PC uses 1400 kWh/year
• equivalent to six standard PCs or three refrigerators...
• With only 2.5% of all systems, gaming PCs consume 20% of all
PC electricity
• 75 TWh/year ($10 billion) of electricity used globally in 2012
Game less, use high-quality components!
Mills, N. & Mills, E. Energy Efficiency (2016) 9: 321. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-015-9371-1

21. • Laptops are more energy efficient than desktop computers
• Do I need a fancy graphics board?
• Do I really need a new cell phone / computer?
• Remove screen savers (useless, need a lot of energy)
• Turn your computer off, look for „energy star“
• Think about how much you stream and play
• Train your deep learning networks wisely
What to do?

22. Let’s go back to the general problem

24. +20% +12%
William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M Newsome, Phoebe Barnard, William R Moomaw,
World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency, BioScience, , biz088, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz088

25. As scientists:
• Push society towards a fact-based debate aside from emotions
• Reducing energy consumption is much more than IcT
• All possibilities for reducing greenhouse emissions have to be
considered
• Renewable energies are yet nothing in comparison to the
total energy consumption, we need much, much more!
• A global problem needs global solutions, cooperation, help
• Reconsider atomic energy production with new reactor types
• Consider geo engineering
… and everything has to be done in parallel!

26. 11,000 Scientists warn (5 Nov 2019)
• Use energy far more efficiently
• Apply strong carbon taxes
• Reduce methane and smut (carbon black)
• Stabilize global population
• End destruction of nature, restore forests and mangroves
• Eat mostly plants and less meat
• Reduce food waste
• Shift economic goals away from GDP growth
William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M Newsome, Phoebe Barnard, William R Moomaw,
World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency, BioScience, , biz088, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz088

28. Two remarks
Reduce flying:
• Industrial countries: flying accounts for most carbon emissions in
private activities
• But world-wide it accounts only for 2% of the greenhouse emissions
Reduce methane:
• Methane is 15% of all greenhouse emissions, but has a 22x higher
impact on climate change
• Sources: soil, production of beef, oil and gas industry
Can be changed relatively easily!!!