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For the past year and a half since I began this blog, some of its content has evolved from strictly an email blog into one that has been involved with Net Neutrality, demographic equality and the criticality of the Internet (and Netiquette) for so many people throughout the world.
The article below will be the beginning of many more regarding the importance of the Net to the environment!
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Executive Director, Greenpeace
USA
Building the
Green Internet: A Joint Venture for Tech Companies and Activists
I've been
looking into the environmental impact of our electronic gadgets for years, and
if there's one thing I learned from producing The Story of Electronics,
it's that companies have an invaluable role to play in making sure our digital
lives make a positive contribution to both people and the planet.
We saw an incredible example of tech
companies turned activists earlier this year. The open Internet -- an Internet
where every person gets to express their voice, no matter how much money they
have -- came under major threat when monopoly cable companies like AT&T and
Comcast tried to gut net-neutrality rules.
Four million
Americans (including tens of thousands of Greenpeace
supporters) raised their voices and told the government to protect
net neutrality, and government regulators listened, ruling against the cable
companies in February in a major win for grassroots democracy. Part of the
reason they succeeded is that many of the biggest Internet companies in the
world, like Netflix, Amazon and Microsoft,
added the power of their voices to the campaign.
Since they already won this battle,
you may wonder why I'm writing this. Well, the Internet needs a lot of
electricity, and its footprint is only growing as more people around the world
get connected. If coal, gas and nuclear power fuels all of that digital growth,
it will lock the world's new digital economy into the polluting energy of
yesterday. If, on the other hand, the Internet is powered by renewable energy,
then it can help usher in the clean-energy revolution we so desperately need to
avoid catastrophic climate change. This is a major opportunity, and
responsibility, for Internet companies to join activists in a crucial fight:
making the Internet green.
Unfortunately,
just as monopoly cable companies like AT&T and Comcast tried to hold us
back from an open Internet, monopoly electric companies that are dependent on
dirty energy want to hold us back from a green Internet. The data centers that
power the Internet are concentrated in a few locations around the world, like
North Carolina and Virginia, so much so that up to 70 percent of global Internet traffic passes through Northern
Virginia every day.
These are the places where the
Internet "cloud" touches the ground; they are predominantly powered
by coal, gas and nuclear power, and the utilities that make and sell the
electricity there are monopolies like Duke Energy in North Carolina and
Dominion Power in Virginia. These companies have fought tooth and nail against opening the market up
to wind and solar power.
The very
same Internet companies that joined grassroots activists to protect net
neutrality are perfectly positioned to join them again to push for more clean
energy -- and, in fact, they must do so if they want to make good on promises
they've made. Amazon, Apple, Box, Facebook, Google, Rackspace, Salesforce, and
Equinix (a major provider of Internet data centers) all are committed to
powering their corners of the Internet with 100-percent renewable energy. But
all of them have operations in places like North Carolina and Virginia, so
they'll never be able to get to 100-percent renewable energy as long as
utilities like Duke and Dominion stand in the way.
One example: In 2014 alone, Amazon Web Services,
the giant cloud-computing subsidiary of Amazon.com, needed as much electricity
to power its data-center growth in Virginia as it would take to power 160,000
U.S. homes, according to Greenpeace's
analysis. With Amazon's massive footprint there being powered almost
entirely by coal, gas and nuclear energy from Dominion's power plants, Amazon
will have to demand more wind and solar from Dominion and Virginia policy
makers if it wants to make good on its 100-percent-renewable pledge.
Some companies have already done exactly this: Apple pushed its utility in
Arizona to provide it with solar energy, and Facebook did the same thing in Iowa for
wind energy. But these examples have been too few and far between.
The
net-neutrality victory this year showed us Internet companies joining with
millions of Americans in the fight to prevent Internet "slow lanes"
and keep the Web open and free for everyone. Now they have the opportunity and
obligation to join activists in the fight to avoid Internet "dirty
lanes," so that we can have an Internet that is free, open and green.
==============================================Good Netiquette And A Green Internet To All!
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