Karin Bornett
Our digital consumption consumes a lot of energy and causes CO2 emissions. The carbon footprint created by digital consumption is made up of various factors:
1. Manufacture of the terminals
The greenhouse gas emissions during production, based on 1 year of useful life, are loud Calculations by the German Öko-Institut:
- TV: 200 kg CO2e per year
- Laptop: 63 kg CO2e per year
- Smartphone: 50 kg CO2e per year
- Voice assistant: 33 kg CO2e per year
2. use
The end devices cause CO2 emissions by consuming electrical energy. "This energy consumption is heavily dependent on the respective user behavior," explains Jens Gröger, senior researcher at the Öko-Institut in one Blog.
The average greenhouse gas emissions in the use phase are:
- TV: 156 kg CO2e per year
- Laptop: 25 kg CO2e per year
- Smartphone: 4 kg CO2e per year
- Voice assistant: 4 kg CO2e per year
3. Data transfer
Gröger calculates: Energy consumption = duration of the transfer * time factor + amount of data transferred * quantity factor
This results in the following greenhouse gas emissions in data networks:
- 4 hours of video streaming per day: 62 kg CO2e per year
- 10 photos for social networks per day: 1 kg CO2e per year
- 2 hours voice assistant per day: 2 kg CO2e per year
- 1 gigabyte backup per day: 11 kg CO2e per year
4. Infrastructure
The data centers that are necessary for the operation of internet-compatible devices are filled with high-performance computers, servers, as well as data storage, network technology and air conditioning technology.
Greenhouse gas emissions in data centers:
- German data centers per Internet user: 213 kg CO2e per year
- 50 Google requests per day: 26 kg CO2e per year
Conclusion
“The manufacture and use of end devices, the transmission of data over the Internet and the use of data centers cause a CO2 footprint per person of 850 kg in total. (...) Our digital lifestyle is not sustainable in its present form. Even if the pre-calculated numbers are only a rough estimate, however, based on their size alone, they show that considerable efforts still have to be made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, both on the end devices and in the data networks and data centers. This is the only way to make digitalization sustainable. ”(Jens Gröger in Blog post by the German Öko-Institut).
The Austrian Waste Consulting Association (VABÖ) comments: “In Austria we can assume similar numbers. This in turn means that our digital consumer behavior alone consumes almost half - if not more - of the CO2 budget available to us per person if climate change is to be kept within tolerable limits. "
https://blog.oeko.de/digitaler-co2-fussabdruck/
