5 ms·

It costs a lot yes, but bad for the environment? How much energy and pollution goes into producing new hardware? Not so sure buying new is at all better for th

• TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  I suppose the question is old desktop, old laptop, or old server. Depends on your compute needs.
• gowld 7y ago
  In a competitive industry, dollar price is a good approximation of energy usage, which is an approximation of pollution.
  • micheljansen 7y ago
    Too bad pollution is externalized to future generations or foreign countries, so not included in the economic equation.
    • the_jeremy 7y ago
      OP is saying that there is pollution for both options, and the total cost of that pollution is proportional to the total cost of ownership of the product. He doesn't provide evidence, but it seems at least plausible.
      • mikepurvis 7y ago
        A lot of it depends what's happening to that Xeon machine if you don't buy it. If it's otherwise going to the landfill then you using it a little longer to defer the creation of brand new hardware is absolutely the greener option. Same logic that applies to driving an older car— it may not be the most efficient, but especially if you're low usage, extending the life of something that already exists is almost certainly greener than using something new.
      • e12e 7y ago
        Yes, you'd hope so - but unfortunately that's not true. We're terrible at pricing externalities (by design, it makes it easier to profit; for example free use of public commons like fjords for farming salmon - creating ecological disasters).
  • challenger22 7y ago
    I wish the people downvoting this guy would actually research this claim. Seems reasonable to me. Seeing for a scatterplot of consumer good MSRP's vs. energy of production would be enlightening.
    • TeMPOraL 7y ago
      That claim assumes no externalities and no shenanigans with business models. I too would like to see a scatterplot, but I already expect GP's claim not to hold for phones, IoT, and anything bought used. And that's also only the manufacturing part. The energy used when operating a device is not usually incorporated in purchase price.
    • crygin 7y ago
      I would assume that they're being downvoted not for their claim (which I would not agree with, though I would love to see that graph), but for missing the point of the comment they responded to which points out that even if older hardware consumes more electricity, it may still be less environmentally harmful than purchasing new hardware which required many resources to manufacture.
      • wwweston 7y ago
        That would miss gowld's point, which seems to be that a good first order approximation of the energy expended in the manufacture of a new machine is probably captured in a fraction of how much its retail price is. You would definitely not expect that a machine selling for $1000 would have used more than $1000 of energy in its manufacture. Even accounting for energy costs all the way down the chain (materials arguably don't have any other cost other than energy and attention involved in collecting/isolating/refining them), my uninformed guess would be that with something like a computer, it's something like a bit less than half, with the rest of it being amortized human attention at various stages plus some profit margin, though I'm sure there's more refined and accurate models available. So, throw out $480 as an energy number for our $1000. That means old hardware that's less energy efficient to the tune of $40 a month will out-impact the manufacturing cost of the new machine in a year. As an exercise, contrast this with older automobile. If you've got a well-functioning 10-20 year old vehicle, it's probably somewhere between 80% to 50% as energy efficient as the higher efficiency choices you can buy new off a lot today. But the sticker price of a vehicle will tell you that it probably $10-20k of energy to produce. Because that number is high, from today, it will probably take your used vehicle longer than its remaining lifetime to exceed energy use involved in making the new car (and most new vehicles won't get you where you're going any faster either).
  • e12e 7y ago
    I don't think that's true, we have serious issues pricing externalities correctly, and making sure the correct party pays for them. Way too often the bill for risk and cleanup lands on the (local) goverment/public - sometimes long after the profit has been made. Common and extreme cases are pollution of the type we see on Nigeria where global conglomerates are "allowed" to ignore safety standards by a corrupt government. Eg: https://www.bbc.com/news/10313107 https://www.bbc.com/news/10313107 See also: Michael Woodiwiss Gangster Capitalism: The United States and the Globalization of Organized Crime https://www.amazon.com/Gangster-Capitalism-United-Globalization-Organized/dp/0786716711/ https://www.amazon.com/Gangster-Capitalism-United-Globalizat... Ed: and another example of problematic incetives is allowing power production for profit. We generally agree we need to use less energy, and yet have businesses that make more money when they can sell more energy... Sure, it might be a benefit to relatively sell more "green" energy - but really, the ideal energy company would make the most money when it got its customers to buy less energy....
  • yellowapple 7y ago
    Which means by buying these workstations used and on-the-cheap, I'm polluting less than if I were to buy brand new hardware. Then there's the electricity cost. I own quite a few old workstations like this, and the power consumption ain't that much higher. Yeah, maybe compared to a laptop, but that's like comparing the feeding habits of a hummingbird v. an emu (and you can buy old laptops for relatively cheap, too).
• lubblig 7y ago
  All the electricity in my city to normal households are from solar/wind/hydro power so using old hardware is definitely better for the environment for me to use old hardware over buying new. It hurts the wallet though.
  • hollerith 7y ago
    Hydropower uses massive amounts of cement, and the cement industry is responsible for about 5% of all carbon emissions. Similarly, if you're counting the environmental impact of manufacturing the more energy-efficient computer, you must also count the environmental impact of the solar panels or wind turbines that do not have to be manufactured because of the increased energy efficiency.
    • e12e 7y ago
      But the argument for buying used hardware holds for existing infrastructure too: the hydro plant is already built. I certainly agree that we need to factor in the impact of construction, though!
    • mikepurvis 7y ago
      Surely the one-time emissions in cement required to build a dam that lasts for decades amortizes down to nothing compared with the ongoing outputs associated with coal or gas fired electricity production? (not to mention the upfront emissions associated with constructing those facilities as well...) Most of those global cement emissions are surely in building sidewalks, highways, bridges, and skyscrapers? Seems weird to blame an otherwise pretty green electricity source for this carbon.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • robocat 7y ago
    Instead you are hurting the global environment (not your local environment). If you use an extra kW, the city doesn't get to sell the extra kW into the national grid. So the national grid needs an extra kW, which is most likely produced by gas! In a nationally connected electricity grid, each extra kW you use, increases the usage of the next marginal kW of power on the network, which is most likely gas (unless you use the kW during off-peak, when it might be nuclear depending on your country).