A Cloud of emissions: The Physical Reality Behind Our Digital Presence

I’m starting a series on the ecological impact of our digital footprint and I want to kick things off by talking about “the cloud” and shedding light on its environmental consequences.

While most climate change activists are focused on limiting emissions from the automotive, aviation and energy sectors, it’s the communications industry, which includes the internet, that is on track to generate more carbon emissions than all of the other sectors. Taking a look under the hood of our digital activities, from emails to streaming, we will uncover how the internet plays a significant role in global pollution, urging us to consider the sustainability of our online presence.

Impact on our Planet’s Resources

Reality Behind the Fluffy Imagery

While the term “cloud” may evoke an image of lightness and airiness, the reality is far more concrete—it requires substantial resources, cooling systems, and energy consumption, contributing to emissions. In reality, the cloud is a network of energy-hungry data centers scattered around the globe. These centers are packed with servers storing vast amounts of data that need constant power and cooling to function. The imagery of the cloud hides the physical infrastructure that is as concrete as any factory or power plant. Every search query, every streamed song, and every virtual meeting relies on this robust physical network.

The number of data centers around the world has increased from half a million in 2012 to over 8 million today. Once you start picturing those data centers with rows and rows of servers online and powered 24/7 you probably start getting an idea of what it takes to keep our online activities running every day.

Energy consumption and carbon emissions

The cloud’s physical infrastructure not only occupies substantial space but also exerts a significant toll on our planet’s resources. Data centers, which are the backbone of cloud services, are notorious for their high energy consumption, doubling the amount of energy they use every four years, which explains how they’re adding to carbon emissions faster than any other part of the tech world. Even worse, they often run on fossil fuels, which leads to a considerable carbon footprint.

Current forecasts indicate that by 2025, data centers will be responsible for 3.2 percent of global carbon emissions and may use up to one-fifth of the world’s electricity. By the year 2040, the emissions from storing digital data are expected to reach 14 percent of global totals, equaling current emission levels of the United States.

The thirsty data centers’ use of water

Water is also significantly affected by our growing reliance on cloud services. Data centers utilize substantial volumes of water principally for cooling their heat-generating equipment. Managing the temperature of data centers is critical; without proper cooling, equipment can overheat, leading to malfunctions or catastrophic failures that can disrupt services for an untold number of users.

The mechanics of this cooling often involve water chillers, evaporative cooling towers, and in some advanced setups, water is directly used to absorb heat from the server racks. This process not only demands large quantities of water but also poses challenges surrounding water conservation and management. In regions where water scarcity is becoming increasingly prevalent, the operation of data centers exerts additional strain on the local water supply, competing with agricultural, industrial, and domestic needs.

Moreover, the heated water discharged from these cooling processes can potentially impact local ecosystems. When large data centers expel warm water back into the environment, it may raise the temperature of nearby water bodies, a phenomenon known as thermal pollution. This temperature rise can disrupt the delicate balance of aquatic ecosystems, harming flora and fauna adapted to stable conditions.

To provide some insight into the magnitude of water usage, it’s reported that some of the largest data centers can consume millions of gallons of water each day. As our data consumption and cloud reliance continue to escalate, so too will the demand for water for data center cooling. The water footprint is just one more facet of our digital activities that we must address as we advance toward digital sustainability and the responsible use of finite resources.

E-waste: The Growing Challenge of Digital Trash

Furthermore, the production and disposal of the hardware in data centers contribute to a cycle of resource extraction, manufacturing, and e-waste.

E-waste is a growing environmental issue that deals with the throw-away of electronic gadgets. As technology improves at a fast pace, many of these gadgets quickly become outdated and get discarded, leading to a huge pile-up of e-waste. Data centers are key to making the cloud work, and they face this problem too because they need to keep updating their technology to manage more data faster and better. This means they often have to get rid of old, less efficient machines, which adds to the already large amount of electronic waste.

The production lifecycle of data center components—from mining the raw materials to manufacturing the finished products—draws heavily on the Earth’s natural resources. When these items are deemed obsolete, their disposal poses significant environmental concerns. Often, e-waste is not handled properly, and valuable and hazardous materials contained within electronic components, such as gold, copper, and lead, can leach into the ground, contaminating soil and water. The responsible recycling of e-waste is essential but remains an unresolved issue, with only a small fraction of e-waste currently undergoing proper recycling processes.

It is crucial to understand that e-waste is not limited to large pieces of equipment; it’s also the small bits like old cables, worn-out hard drives, and all sorts of little gadgets that keep data centers going. These items may be small, but they add up, especially since they’re often swapped out for new ones to keep things running smoothly or to update technology.

As the cloud grows and we use more data, we create more e-waste, which is a rapidly increasing type of trash. Each time we improve our cloud technology, we also create electronic garbage that can harm the environment if we don’t take care of it properly. It’s really important that we start to do things differently—we need to integrate more sustainable practices, such as extended product lifecycles, improved designs for recycling, and broader implementation of circular economy principles. By changing how we handle technology throughout its life, we can help stop the growth of e-waste and work towards a greener digital world.

To move towards digital sustainability, we need to confront these environmental costs directly and make conscious choices about our digital consumption to reduce the strain on our planet’s resources.

How Everyday Activities Contribute to Emissions

Quantifying the environmental impact of our online behavior can be eye-opening. Our daily online activities, from sending emails to browsing social media, all contribute to the internet’s carbon emissions. Each digital action sets off a chain reaction of energy consumption. When you send an email, it doesn’t just go from point A to B; it passes through servers that require power to operate. Consider that an average email has a footprint of about 4 grams of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent). This might seem negligible, but with over 300 billion emails sent daily, the emissions add up quickly. Streaming videos and music services also consume large amounts of energy, especially as the demand for high-definition content grows.

But it’s not just about consumption. The very infrastructure of the internet, is always on, always drawing power, and always emitting carbon. These digital footprints are largely invisible to us as end-users, who often consider our digital activity as intangible, and therefore, non-impactful. The demand for data is growing exponentially, and so is the energy required to support it, leading to a rise in carbon emissions. Recognizing our online activities as contributors to emissions is crucial in paving the way for a sustainable web.