Nyan Cat

I mean, yes, of course I knew that data files are stored on servers and that those servers consume electricity. But this is a good example of reframing. How many emails have I got stored that I will never look at again? How many files stored in the cloud ‘just in case’?

Multiply that by millions (and billions) of internet users and we’ve got… a climate-relevant issue.

When “I can has cheezburger?” became one of the first internet memes to blow our minds, it’s unlikely that anyone worried about how much energy it would use up.

But research has now found that the vast majority of data stored in the cloud is “dark data”, meaning it is used once then never visited again. That means that all the memes and jokes and films that we love to share with friends and family – from “All your base are belong to us”, through Ryan Gosling saying “Hey Girl”, to Tim Walz with a piglet – are out there somewhere, sitting in a datacentre, using up energy. By 2030, the National Grid anticipates that datacentres will account for just under 6% of the UK’s total electricity consumption, so tackling junk data is an important part of tackling the climate crisis.

[…]

One funny meme isn’t going to destroy the planet, of course, but the millions stored, unused, in people’s camera rolls does have an impact, he explained: “The one picture isn’t going to make a drastic impact. But of course, if you maybe go into your own phone and you look at all the legacy pictures that you have, cumulatively, that creates quite a big impression in terms of energy consumption.”

Cloud operators and tech companies have a financial incentive to stop people from deleting junk data, as the more data that is stored, the more people pay to use their systems. “There are maybe other big contributors to [greenhouse gas] emissions, which maybe haven’t been picked up. And we would certainly argue that data is one of those and it will grow and get bigger, particularly think about that huge explosion but also, we know through forecasts that in the next year to two, if we take all the renewable energy in the world, that wouldn’t be enough to accommodate the amount of energy data requires. So that’s quite a scary thought.”

Source: The Guardian

Image: Nyan Cat