Post by mac on Nov 20, 2020 13:36:28 GMT
By David Molloy, technology reporter www.bbc.com/
Your wi-fi router sends the signal along wires to the local exchange - the green box on the street corner - from there to a telecoms company and from there to huge data centres operated by the tech giants. Each of those runs on electricity and it all adds up.
But a single e-mail's effect on such massive infrastructure is tiny.
"Your laptop will still be on, your wi-fi will still be on, your home internet connection will still be on, the wider network will still use roughly the same amount of energy even with a reduction in volume. There will be a small saving in the data centre hosting the e-mail, particularly if it allows them to use a few less servers. But the carbon saved will be far far less than 1g per e-mail," according to Chris Preist, professor of sustainability and computer systems at the University of Bristol.
Rather than worrying about relatively low-impact emails, some researchers suggest we should turn our attention to services such as game and video-streaming and cloud storage which have a much larger effect.
Your wi-fi router sends the signal along wires to the local exchange - the green box on the street corner - from there to a telecoms company and from there to huge data centres operated by the tech giants. Each of those runs on electricity and it all adds up.
But a single e-mail's effect on such massive infrastructure is tiny.
"Your laptop will still be on, your wi-fi will still be on, your home internet connection will still be on, the wider network will still use roughly the same amount of energy even with a reduction in volume. There will be a small saving in the data centre hosting the e-mail, particularly if it allows them to use a few less servers. But the carbon saved will be far far less than 1g per e-mail," according to Chris Preist, professor of sustainability and computer systems at the University of Bristol.
Rather than worrying about relatively low-impact emails, some researchers suggest we should turn our attention to services such as game and video-streaming and cloud storage which have a much larger effect.
