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> The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Holy cow, that is a lot. 1-3 grams of CO2 per single load of a page? M

> The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Holy cow, that is a lot. 1-3 grams of CO2 per single load of a page? Makes me feel guilty about even clicking the article.

dtech 6y ago
That is not a lot. it's about 4mWh for coal power. In comparison, leaving a 300W computer setup on for 10 hours each day with coal power is 3KWh or 2.5kg of CO2.
- akiselev 6y ago
  So it takes the computing power equivalent of a 300W PC running for 10 hours to serve a thousand page views? At 50 req/page view, that server is handling ~1.5 requests per second. That kind of throughput can be handled by a RaspberryPi, so are we seriously wasting 95%+ of the power budget routing packets and idling servers?
  - ben_w 6y ago
    A million, not a thousand. Milliwatt-hours to kilowatt-hours.
baaym 6y ago
When I reached the bottom of the page it even loaded an extra article. Now that's a real waste of CO2.
abbe98 6y ago
Sending a short email is estimated to release 4g CO2: https://phys.org/news/2015-11-carbon-footprint-email.html https://phys.org/news/2015-11-carbon-footprint-email.html
pjc50 6y ago
The average human breathes out 1g of CO2 every minute and a half. By comparison, average UK cars put out 124.5g for every km driven. It's not nothing, but it's not a lot either. It probably is worth evaluating the electrical efficiency of the tech industry as a whole, both in terms of highly executed code hotspots and entire pieces of business of questionable utility (ad javascript, cryptocurrency proof-of-waste), but individual web pages are the plastic straws of the industry compared to the giant flare stacks of real problems.
- maelito 6y ago
  Ads and all the services that make a modern Web page should be included in the estimation.
- aembleton 6y ago
  It's the equivalent of driving 19 metres in an average UK car. That's not far, but that is for a single web page. That seems incredibly high to me.
- reportgunner 6y ago
  What is the comparison of the number of cars in the world versus the number of people in the world ?
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Estimates of vehicles in use (including commercial) seem to be about 1.2 billion. But the relevant number is surely total miles driven?
sephamorr 6y ago
I'm having a very hard time rationalizing these numbers. Something has to have some very poor assumptions: Let's assume each page load is ~1mbit, and it's being served from 1000km away. 1mbit may be low, but most of it will presumably be content delivered by a CDN which is far closer than 1000km. The reference design (which I work on) for 400G DWDM systems are ~100W for 2 transceivers + EDFA + switches, for a standard 80km link. Assuming we hop every 80km (which should be conservative here), we get 3mJ for the energy through the network. The previous generation is probably 10x worse, so ~30mJ. Let's add the endpoint too; Wifi router + cable modem (12W or rather 3W marginal power since it's running anyway/ 200mbit) = 15mJ And finally for the server. I'd hope the server could do 1k requests per second, and that should amortize against backends, etc (2k RPS, but frontend + DB backend server, maybe), maybe 150W for the server, so 150mJ. This gives us 200mJ for a page load. Using California's current (1:28am) emissions for power generation of 0.274 mT/MWh (it's 1/3rd of this during the day), this yields 15ug/request. Where do the remaining 5 orders of magnitude come from? What am I missing? If TCO/production energy of the server was included, that couldn't more than double it (capex in a datacenter < opex, and if 100% of the server cost was for energy, we could double, but this is wildly conservative)
- barbegal 6y ago
  Here is the methodology https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200131-why-and-how-does-future-planet-count-carbon https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200131-why-and-how-does... I think most of it comes from your client device. Your laptop may be using 50W of power or about 20g of CO2 per hour so reading the article for 6 minutes is ~2g of CO2.
  - maelito 6y ago
    In case someone wants to do the math again : 50W for 1 hour : 50Wh or 0.050kWh California : 187gCO₂eq/kWh according to https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/US-CAL-CISO https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/US-CAL-CISO -> 9.35gCO₂eq/h -> 0.16g/min -> 0.935g for 6 minutes
    - sephamorr 6y ago
wiz21c 6y ago
Just watching a movie about CO2 emissions is order of magnitudes above.

dtech 6y ago

That is not a lot. it's about 4mWh for coal power. In comparison, leaving a 300W computer setup on for 10 hours each day with coal power is 3KWh or 2.5kg of CO2.

akiselev 6y ago
So it takes the computing power equivalent of a 300W PC running for 10 hours to serve a thousand page views? At 50 req/page view, that server is handling ~1.5 requests per second. That kind of throughput can be handled by a RaspberryPi, so are we seriously wasting 95%+ of the power budget routing packets and idling servers?
- ben_w 6y ago
  A million, not a thousand. Milliwatt-hours to kilowatt-hours.

baaym 6y ago

When I reached the bottom of the page it even loaded an extra article. Now that's a real waste of CO2.

abbe98 6y ago

Sending a short email is estimated to release 4g CO2: https://phys.org/news/2015-11-carbon-footprint-email.html https://phys.org/news/2015-11-carbon-footprint-email.html

pjc50 6y ago

The average human breathes out 1g of CO2 every minute and a half. By comparison, average UK cars put out 124.5g for every km driven. It's not nothing, but it's not a lot either. It probably is worth evaluating the electrical efficiency of the tech industry as a whole, both in terms of highly executed code hotspots and entire pieces of business of questionable utility (ad javascript, cryptocurrency proof-of-waste), but individual web pages are the plastic straws of the industry compared to the giant flare stacks of real problems.

maelito 6y ago
Ads and all the services that make a modern Web page should be included in the estimation.
aembleton 6y ago
It's the equivalent of driving 19 metres in an average UK car. That's not far, but that is for a single web page. That seems incredibly high to me.
reportgunner 6y ago
What is the comparison of the number of cars in the world versus the number of people in the world ?
- pjc50 6y ago
  Estimates of vehicles in use (including commercial) seem to be about 1.2 billion. But the relevant number is surely total miles driven?

sephamorr 6y ago

I'm having a very hard time rationalizing these numbers. Something has to have some very poor assumptions: Let's assume each page load is ~1mbit, and it's being served from 1000km away. 1mbit may be low, but most of it will presumably be content delivered by a CDN which is far closer than 1000km. The reference design (which I work on) for 400G DWDM systems are ~100W for 2 transceivers + EDFA + switches, for a standard 80km link. Assuming we hop every 80km (which should be conservative here), we get 3mJ for the energy through the network. The previous generation is probably 10x worse, so ~30mJ. Let's add the endpoint too; Wifi router + cable modem (12W or rather 3W marginal power since it's running anyway/ 200mbit) = 15mJ And finally for the server. I'd hope the server could do 1k requests per second, and that should amortize against backends, etc (2k RPS, but frontend + DB backend server, maybe), maybe 150W for the server, so 150mJ. This gives us 200mJ for a page load. Using California's current (1:28am) emissions for power generation of 0.274 mT/MWh (it's 1/3rd of this during the day), this yields 15ug/request. Where do the remaining 5 orders of magnitude come from? What am I missing? If TCO/production energy of the server was included, that couldn't more than double it (capex in a datacenter < opex, and if 100% of the server cost was for energy, we could double, but this is wildly conservative)

barbegal 6y ago
Here is the methodology https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200131-why-and-how-does-future-planet-count-carbon https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200131-why-and-how-does... I think most of it comes from your client device. Your laptop may be using 50W of power or about 20g of CO2 per hour so reading the article for 6 minutes is ~2g of CO2.
- maelito 6y ago
  In case someone wants to do the math again : 50W for 1 hour : 50Wh or 0.050kWh California : 187gCO₂eq/kWh according to https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/US-CAL-CISO https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/US-CAL-CISO -> 9.35gCO₂eq/h -> 0.16g/min -> 0.935g for 6 minutes
  - sephamorr 6y ago

wiz21c 6y ago

Just watching a movie about CO2 emissions is order of magnitudes above.