Every time you visit a website, send an email, use an app or browse social media, you’re using energy. And energy has a carbon footprint. All this digital activity produces greenhouse gas emissions.
- Since 2010, the number of internet users worldwide has more than doubled.
- Data centre electricity consumption has grown by around 12% per year since 2017. That’s more than four times faster than the rate of total electricity consumption.
- Data centre electricity consumption is set to more than double by 2030.
Heating up the planet
Everything we do online travels through data centres and their servers. As our data is processed, it generates a waste product: heat. This means that each data centre uses additional energy to cool the servers down.
A whopping 40% of the total power a data centre consumes is used for cooling.
If the internet was a country, it would be the 13th largest emitter.
Sustainable Web Manifesto
The power needed for data centres in the US is forecast to grow 10% a year until 2030.
Smaller countries with expanding data centre markets have also seen rapid growth. In Ireland, data centres used more electricity than all its urban homes combined in 2023. In Denmark, data centres will use one-fifth of the country’s energy by 2030.
Digital technologies use energy and create emissions. However, it’s not all bad. They could also be part of the solution, helping transition to clean energy.
The scale of the challenge
- 251,100,000 emails are sent
- 138,900,000 reels are played on Facebook and Instagram
- 18,800,000 texts are sent
- 5,900,000 Google searches are made
- 3,472,222 YouTube videos are watched
- 3,300,000 images are shared on Snapchat
- 1,041,666 answers are given by Siri
- 1,040,000 messages are sent on Slack
- 16,000 TikTok videos are uploaded
What you can do
As marketers and comms teams, it’s important to know what impact our work is having. Luckily, there are many ways you can reduce your carbon emissions.
Read through this guide to see how you can reduce your carbon footprint.
You may find that not all these suggestions are practical or do-able in your circumstances. But with this information you can evaluate your activities and get fresh ideas to make changes that work for you.