Internet helps
Americans save more energy every year
For every kilowatt-hour
of power that Internet-linked computers use, they save at least 10
times that amount, a recent study finds.
By Mark Clayton | Staff
writer of The Christian Science Monitor
The rate at which the United States is becoming
more energy-efficient has soared since 1995, when the computer-based
Internet and communications revolution began soaking into US
society.
That conclusion – from a groundbreaking study
by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) last
week – stands in sharp contrast to recent concerns that the computer
backbone of the Internet was gobbling up huge amounts of energy.
Indeed, all America's servers – the computers
that direct traffic on the Internet – and the systems that cool them
use about 1.2 percent of the nation's electricity, according to a
study last year. That's still a lot of power, comparable to the
energy used by color TVs in the US.
But it turns out that for every kilowatt-hour
of electricity used by information and communications technologies,
the US saves at least 10 times that amount, the new ACEEE report
found.
"Acceleration of information and computer
technology across the US landscape post 1995 is driving much of the
nation's energy-productivity gain," says John Laitner of the ACEEE
and coauthor of the study. "Had we continued at the historic rate of
prior years, we would today be using the energy equivalent of 1
billion barrels of oil more [per year] than we were" in the early
1990s.
After the oil embargoes of the 1970s, America
quickly became more efficient and its "energy intensity" fell
sharply. Energy intensity is the amount of energy required to
produce a dollar of economic output. But its efficiency improvements
slowed to less than 1 percent per year between 1986 and 1996.
Then something dramatic happened: Efficiency
improvements sped up and the decline in energy intensity reached an
average 2.9 percent annually between 1996 and 2001. Most of that
decline came from technological innovation, according to the ACEEE
study. Since 2001, the pace of US energy efficiency gains has
remained remarkably high, at a robust 2.4 percent annually, at least
half due to technology gains, researchers say.
Companies are making big improvements. Not
long ago, delivery giant UPS introduced new software to develop more
efficient routes and help drivers avoid left-hand turns. Result:
28.5 million fewer miles driven and 3 million gallons of gas saved
each year.
Efficiency gains for individuals have saved a
lot of energy, too, Dr. Laitner says. E-mail, instant messaging, and
Internet news can help organize and streamline individual schedules.
Ordering books or groceries online avoids extra trips to the mall.
Transferring funds to a college student electronically – or
downloading an IRS document – avoids having them mailed.
Telecommuting once or twice a week to work avoids gas burned and
lessens congestion on the roads.
"The most significant part of this story is
that while these technologies do indeed consume some energy, the net
effect is that they cause society and the economy overall to use
less energy," says Richard Hirsh, a specialist in energy history at
Virginia Tech who reviewed the study.
"Not long ago we had all these people running
around saying the Internet was going to gobble up all this power,"
says researcher Jonathan Koomey at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory. "But their claims were vastly overestimated.
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