Sebastopol City Council
June 21, 2022

THE
CLOUD
BEGINS
WITH
COAL
BIG

DATA, BIG

NETWORKS, BIG

INFRASTRUCTURE, AND
BIG
POWER
AN

OVERVIEW
OF
THE

ELECTRICITY
USED
BY
THE
GLOBAL

DIGITAL

ECOSYSTEM
Mark
P.

Mills
CEO,
Digital
Power
Group
www.tech-­‐pundit.com
Sponsored
by:

National
Mining
Association
American
Coalition
for
Clean
Coal
Electricity
August 2013
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
2 THE
CLOUD
BEGINS
WITH
COAL
BIG

DATA, BIG

NETWORKS, BIG

INFRASTRUCTURE, AND
BIG
POWER
AN

OVERVIEW
OF
THE

ELECTRICITY
USED
BY THE
GLOBAL

DIGITAL

ECOSYSTEM
Mark
P.

Mills
CEO,
Digital
Power
Group
www.tech-­‐pundit.com
Sponsored
by:

National
Mining
Association
American
Coalition
for
Clean
Coal
Electricity
August 2013
Contents

EXECUTIVE

SUMMARY
THE
STATE
AND
FUTURE
OF
THE

INFORMATION

ECOSYSTEM

1. PREFACE
– WE’VE

ENTERED
A
NEW
ELECTRICITY-­‐CENTRIC DIGITAL
ERA

2. THE
GLOBAL

CONTEXT
– ENERGY
DEMAND

GROWS, BUT

ELECTRICITY
GROWS
FASTER

3. THE
U.S. CONTEXT
– DEMAND
FOR

ELECTRICITY
GROWS

4. THE
RISE
OF
THE

INFORMATION

ECONOMY
– BIG
AND

GETTING

BIGGER, FAST

5. THE

INFORMATION

ECONOMY
– HOW
MUCH

ELECTRICITY
DOES
IT
USE
& WHERE
IS
IT
USED?

ELECTRIC
DEMAND
IN
THE
INFORMATION-­‐COMMUNICATIONS

TECHNOLOGIES
(ICT) ECOSYSTEM

6. DATA

CENTERS

7. COMMUNICATIONS

NETWORKS

8. END-­‐USE

DEVICES

9. MANUFACTURING

10. PUTTING
IT
ALL

TOGETHER

11. WHERE
DOES
& WHERE
WILL
THE
POWER
COME
FROM?

12. APPENDICES

APPENDIX
A -­‐-­‐ DOES
USING
THE
CLOUD
SAVE
ENERGY?

APPENDIX
B -­‐-­‐ THE
IMPACT
OF

EFFICIENCY
ON
(ICT) ELECTRICITY
DEMAND

REFERENCES
& NOTES
This
report
provides an
independent
assessment
of
the
technical
literature
and
the
nature
of
existing
estimates
and
surveys
of

electric
demand in the
global
and
U.S. ICT
ecosystems.

This
analysis was
supported in
part by
the
National
Mining
Association

and
American
Coalition
for
Clean
Coal
Electricity.

DPG is
responsible
for
the
contents
of
this report
and
the
analyses
contained

herein.

The
analysis
and
the
graphics developed
during
the
course
of
this
research
represent
the
independent
work
and
views
of

DPG and
are
intended
to
contribute
to
the
dialogue
on
the
present
and
future
energy
requirements of
the
ICT
ecosystem.

Cover
image
credit:

Shutterstock
Report
graphics
drawn
by
Bankesh
Thakur
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
3 THE
CLOUD
BEGINS
WITH
COAL
BIG

DATA, BIG

NETWORKS, BIG

INFRASTRUCTURE, AND
BIG
POWER
AN

OVERVIEW
OF
THE

ELECTRICITY
USED
BY
THE
GLOBAL

DIGITAL

ECOSYSTEM

EXECUTIVE

SUMMARY
The
information
economy
is
a
blue-­‐whale
economy
with
its
energy
uses mostly
out
of
sight.

Based
on
a

mid-­‐range
estimate,
the world’s Information-­‐Communications-­‐Technologies (ICT)
ecosystem uses
about 1,500
TWh
of
electricity annually,
equal
to
all
the
electric
generation
of Japan
and
Germany

combined
-­‐-­‐ as
much
electricity
as
was
used
for global
illumination in 1985.

The
ICT
ecosystem now
approaches 10%
of
world
electricity
generation.

Or
in
other
energy terms – the
zettabyte
era
already
uses about
50%
more energy than global
aviation.

Reduced
to
personal
terms,
although
charging
up
a
single
tablet
or
smart
phone requires
a
negligible

amount
of
electricity,
using
either
to
watch
an
hour
of
video
weekly consumes
annually
more
electricity
in
the
remote
networks
than two new
refrigerators use in a
year.1 And
as
the
world

continues
to
electrify,
migrating towards one
refrigerator
per
household,
it also
evolves towards
several

smartphones and
equivalent
per
person.

The
growth
in
ICT
energy
demand
will
continue
to
be
moderated
by
efficiency
gains.

But
the
historic

rate
of
improvement
in
the efficiency
of
underlying
ICT
technologies
started
slowing
around
2005,

followed
almost
immediately
by
a new
era
of
rapid
growth
in
global
data
traffic,
and
in
particular
the

emergence
of
wireless
broadband
for
smartphones
and
tablets.

The
inherent
nature
of
the
mobile

Internet,
a
key
feature
of
the
emergent
Cloud
architecture,
requires far
more
energy
than
do
wired

networks.

The
remarkable
and
recent
changes
in
technology
mean
that current estimates
of
global
ICT

energy
use,
most
of
which
use
pre-­‐iPhone
era
data,
understate
reality.

Trends
now
promise faster,
not

slower,
growth
in
ICT
energy
use.

Future
growth
in electricity
to
power
the global
ICT
ecosystem
is anchored
in
just two
variables,

demand
(how
fast
traffic
grows),
and
supply
(how
fast
technology
efficiency
improves):
 As
costs
keep
plummeting, how
fast
do another billion
people
buy smartphones
and
join
wireless
broadband
networks
where
they
will
use 1,000
times
more
data
per
person
than

they
do
today;
how
fast
do another
billion,
or
more,
join
the
Internet
at
all; how
fast
do
a

trillion
machines
and
devices
join
the
Internet
to
fuel
the
information
appetite
of
Big
Data?
 Can
engineers
invent, and
companies
deploy, more
efficient
ICT
hardware
faster
than
data

traffic grows?
To
estimate the
amount
of electricity
used
to
fuel
everything
that
produces,
stores,
transports,

processes
and
displays
zettabytes
of
data, one
must
account
for
the
energy
used
by:
 Data
centers
that
have
become
warehouse-­‐scale
supercomputers
unlike
anything
in
history;
 Ubiquitous
broadband
wired
and
wireless
communications
networks;
 The
myriad
of
end-­‐use
devices
from PCs
to tablets
and
smart
phones
to
digital
TV, and,
 The
manufacturing
facilities
producing
all
the
ICT
hardware.

Hourly Internet
traffic
will
soon
exceed the annual traffic
of
the
year
2000.

And
demand
for
data
and

bandwidth
and
the
associated infrastructure
are
growing
rapidly
not
just
to
enable
new
consumer

products
and
video,
but
also
to
drive
revolutions
in
everything
from
healthcare
to
cars,
and
from

factories
to
farms.

Historically,
demand
for
bits
has grown faster
than
the
energy
efficiency
of
using

them.

In
order
for
worldwide
ICT
electric
demand
to
merely double
in
a
decade,
unprecedented

improvements
in
efficiency will
be
needed now.

Electricity
fuels
the
infrastructure of
the
world’s
ICT ecosystem
-­‐-­‐ the
Internet,
Big
Data
and
the
Cloud.

Coal
is
the
world’s
largest
single
current
and
future
source
of
electricity.

Hence
the
title
of
this
paper.
<><>
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
4 THE
CLOUD
BEGINS
WITH
COAL
BIG

DATA, BIG

NETWORKS, BIG

INFRASTRUCTURE, AND
BIG
POWER
AN

OVERVIEW
OF
THE

ELECTRICITY
USED
BY
THE
GLOBAL

DIGITAL

ECOSYSTEM
Where Electricity Is Consumed in the Digital Universe
Global Electricity Demand: The Cloud, Illumination, and EVs The global ICT ecosystem uses as much electricity as global lighting did circa 1985, and in two decades will likely use triple the energy of all EVs in the world by then, assuming an optimistic 200 million EV forecast. [“Cloud” is used here to refer to the entire global ICT ecosystem, and not to a more narrow definition of Cloud business services.] [Red triangles indicate global ICT estimates from Greenpeace. Coal use is based on current global 40% share of electricity generation.] The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
5 1. PREFACE
– WE’VE

ENTERED
A
NEW
ELECTRICITY-­‐CENTRIC DIGITAL
ERA
Shortly,
hourly Internet
traffic
will
exceed the
Internet’s annual traffic
of the
year 2000.

And
data

created,
used
and
transported
annually
– the
“digital
universe”
– is
now
growing
at
a
faster
pace
than
at

any
time
in
history.

The
world
is
in
what
Cisco
has
coined,
the
zettabyte
era.2

(The
unit
zetta
is
a
tera

times
one
billion;
a zetta-­‐stack
of
dollar
bills
would
reach
the
sun
and
back
–-­‐ one
million
times.)
Size of the Digital Universe – Annual Data Created & Consumed Data Source: IDC Digital Universe 2013
“The digital universe is made up of images and videos on mobile phones uploaded to YouTube, digital movies populating the pixels of our high-definition TVs, banking data swiped in an ATM, security footage at airports and major events such as the Olympic Games, subatomic collisions recorded by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, transponders recording highway tolls…” All
of
this
digital
traffic
requires
a
huge distributed
physical
infrastructure
of
equipment
that

specifically
and
almost
exclusively
consumes electricity.

Since
coal
is
the world’s largest
and
fastest

growing
source
of
electricity – 68%
of
additional
supply
over
the
past
decade
and
forecast
to
supply
at

least
50%
for
the
next
decade3 -­‐-­‐ the
reality is
that the
digital
universe
and
Cloud
begins
with
coal.

Annual Global Electricity Generated
Data Source: IEA
Coal is 40% of global electricity and is forecast, by the IEA, to supply 50% of the growth in world demand over the next 20 years.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
6 Global
investment
in
the
infrastructure
of
the digital
economy
is
already
over
$5
trillion,
and
will
grow

another
$3
trillion
within
a decade.

Global
Big
Data
capital
spending
is now
in
the
same
league
as Big

Oil.4

But while
Big
Oil
produces
energy,
Big
Data
consumes energy, specifically
electricity.

Infrastructure Investment in the Digital Universe
Data Source: IDC Digital Universe 2013
Even as the cost (measured in $ per gigabyte) of IT equipment keeps falling, annual IT enterprise investment keeps climbing.

Information-­‐Communications-­‐Technologies (ICT) -­‐-­‐ the Internet,
Big
Data
and
the
Cloud
-­‐-­‐ use

electricity
across
every
niche
of
the
digital ecosystem,
from
handheld
devices
and
IT
embedded
in

machines,
to
data
centers,
networks
and
factories.

Since
all
digital
bits
are
electrons
-­‐-­‐ or
optical
and

RF
photons
which
are
quantum
cousins
to
electrons
-­‐-­‐ astronomical
quantities
of
data eventually add

up
to
real
power
in
the
real
world.

This
reality
has
been
noted
by
Greenpeace,
for
example,
which
has

ranked the
coal
dependence
of
major
cloud
data
center
companies.

Dependence on Coal for Data Centers
Source: Greenpeace International, How Clean is Your Cloud, April 2012 The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
7 Now,
the
scale
and
the
character
of
the
ICT
ecosystem
are
changing.

Not
only
will
there
be
more
and

bigger
data
centers
coming,
but
the
evolution
of
computing
towards
mobile
platforms,
smart
phones

and
tablets creating
the “Mobile
Internet” is
radically
altering
where
and
how
data
are produced
and

used,
collaterally
changing
the
nature
and
scale
of
the
network
infrastructure.

Global Installed Based of Computing - - The Rise of the Mobile Internet Data Source: Internet Trends, Mary Meeker, Kleiner Perkins, 2012 & 2013 PCs (including notebooks) vs. smart mobile (tablets + smartphones) The
Mobile
Internet,
the
Cloud and
Big
Data
revolutions create
economic
opportunity
and
generate

enormous
efficiencies.

But
just
how
big
is
the
global
ICT
ecosystem
now,
and
how
big
will
it
become?

How
much
electricity
is
consumed,
and
will
be
consumed
in
the
future,
by the
entire ICT
ecosystem?
The
new
and
emerging
digital
devices
and
services
for consumer
and
businesses
have
created

opportunities
unimagined in
scale
or
character
by
any
visionary
during
the
heyday
of
“irrational

exuberance”
of
the
1990s when
the
Internet
began.

Soon
more
data
will
be
associated
with
non-­‐PC

devices
than
PCs
– even
as
PC-­‐centric
traffic
itself
doubles.

Where Global Data Traffic Originates
Data Source: Cisco, The Zettabyte Era
At 80 exabytes monthly, the world enters the zettabyte per year era.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
8 2. THE
GLOBAL
CONTEXT – ENERGY
DEMAND

GROWS, BUT

ELECTRICITY
GROWS
FASTER
Energy
forecasting
has entered
a
new
era driven
by
radical
changes
on
both
the
demand
and
supply

sides
of
the
equation. Population
and economic
growth
are
the
driving
forces
in the
world’s
need
for
energy in
general
and
electricity
in
particular.

Even
with substantial
gains
in
efficiency,
overall
global

energy
use
will
rise by
an
amount
equivalent
to
adding
two United
States’ worth
demand by
2030.

World Energy Use and GDP
Data Source5: DOE/EIA; IEA, BP, Exxon. (constant $2010) Meanwhile,
the electrification
of
everything
continues. The
world
is
on
track
by
2035
to
cross
a
threshold
the
U.S.
crossed
in
1995,
wherein energy
used
for
electricity
exceeds
that
used
for
everything

else
– everything, that
is, excluding
transportation, which
will
remain
largely non-­‐electrified
for

decades,
even
in the
most
optimistic
scenarios.

How
much
of
the
growth
in
electricity
comes
from
information
technologies and the
Cloud?
Global Electric v. Non-Electric Energy Consumption
(Excluding energy used in transportation)
Data Source: Exxon
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
9 3. THE
U.S. CONTEXT
– DEMAND

FOR ELECTRICITY
GROWS
U.S.
electric
demand
grew 30%
over
the
past
two
decades and
is
forecast
by
the
EIA
to
grow
another
15% over
the
coming
two.
6 Meanwhile,
non-­‐electric
non-­‐transportation
energy
use
started
declining
in

1995
– marking
a
turning
point
in
the
continued
electrification
of
the
economy.

That
point
in
history
is

contemporaneous
with
the
emergence
and
growth
of
the
ubiquitous Internet.

U.S. Electric v. Non-Electric Energy Consumption
(Excluding energy used in transportation)
Data Source: DOE/EIA
A 15% growth by 2030 on top of America’s enormous electric system requires additional generation equal to the power system of Germany.

Transportation remains largely un-electrified; electric vehicle (EV) penetration remains under 0.1% even by 2035 in EIA forecasts.) About 80%
of electricity
is
used
by
three
classes
of
equipment:
illumination,
cooling
and
heating,
and

electric
motors.

Remarkable efficiency
gains
in
these
legacy
uses
have
taken
place
over
the
past
two

decades,
a
period
long
enough
to
see
significant
turnover
to
new
more
efficient
equipment
thereby

moderating
demand
growth
as
the
economy
expanded.
7 Average Efficiency of Five Major Appliances
Data Source: The Impact of Consumer Electronics on Home Electricity Use, NRDC The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
10 Off-­‐setting
the gains
in
average
efficiency
of
conventional
equipment
are
the macro-­‐economic
features

that
drive
more demand.

Over
the
past
two decades:

population
and
commercial
building
space both

grew
25%,
total
residential
space
grew
50%,
and
GDP
and
industrial
output grew
60% and
50%
respectively.

Future
demand
growth
will
depend
on
how
fast
more efficient
conventional
equipment
is

installed,
and
whether
there
are
new
uses
for
electricity.

Average Power Density to Illuminate Commercial Office Space (Average power per square foot of building space)
Data Source: Energy Efficiency Trends in Residential and Commercial Buildings, USDOE A key
feature
driving
the
recent
and
future
growth
in
electric
demand
is largely buried
in
the
statistics
-­‐
-­‐ the
rise
of
ICT
hardware
everywhere from
the
wireless
networks,
to
the
gargantuan
data
centers,
to

the
proliferation
of
devices
in
homes
and
offices,
and
the
factories
where
microprocessors
are
made.

Compare
the
power density
trends
for illumination
(above) with
ICT
equipment (below),
the
latter
now
common
in
commercial
buildings and
the
only
‘occupant’
that
fills thousands
of
warehouse-­‐scale
data

centers.

The
average square
foot
of
a
data
center
uses
100 to
200 times
more electricity
than does
a

square
foot of
a modern
office
building.

Put
another
way,
a
tiny
few
thousand
square
foot
data
room

uses more
electricity
than
lighting
up a
one
hundred
thousand
square
foot
shopping
mall.

Power Density of Equipment to Process and Communicate Data (Power density of typical datacenter equipment)
Data Source: ASHRAE Datacom Equipment Power Trends
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
11 4. THE
RISE
OF
THE

INFORMATION
ECONOMY – BIG
AND

GETTING

BIGGER, FAST

Over
$1
trillion
of
the
U.S.
economy
is
associated
with the
ecosystem
of
information
and
data
-­‐-­‐ moving

bits – everything
from
the
manufacturing
of
ICT
equipment,
to
services
products
and
infrastructure.

This
is
more
than
twice
the
share
of
the
GDP
associated
with
transporting
people
and
stuff – similarly

counting
everything
from
vehicle manufacturing
to
FedEx
and
all
forms
of
transportation
services.

U.S. Share of GDP: Moving Information v. Moving People & Things Data Source: U.S. Census Table 670
The
information
sector
is now the
fastest
growing
part
of
the
economy.

In
the
last
decade,
the

transportation
share grew
15% while
the
information
economy grew
45%.

U.S. Share of GDP: Moving Information v. Moving People & Things Data Source: U.S. Census Table 670
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
12 Before
exploring
information’s energy
appetite,
consider the core
driving
force
for
ICT growth:

Computing
and
the
networks
to
connect
people
and
things
to
computing
have
become
stunningly

cheap.

Consequently,
computing
is
increasingly
showing
up
everywhere, not
just
in
phones
and
tablets

but
embedded
in
toys,
tools and
medicine.

Cost of Information Technology -- Normalized to an iPad Source: A Dozen Economic Facts About Innovation, Hamilton Project It would have cost $10,000 in 2000, $100 million in 1980, and $10 billion in 1960 to buy an iPad’s computing capability Information
technology
has
declined
in
real
costs
in
a
way
that
is
unprecedented
in
the
history
of
any

product
or
service.

Only
lighting
technology
has
had
a
similar
kind
of
exponential
decline
in
costs.

But

even
there,
in
50 years
computing
costs have
dropped
a
100
million
fold
more than
illumination

technology cost
declined
in
over
200
years.

Just
as
the
collapse
in
the
cost
of
illumination
over
history

has
lead
to
the
now
ubiquitous
use
of
lumens,
so
too
is the
even
greater
decline
in
computing
costs

propelling
an
even
broader
diffusion of
data.

Cost of Illumination Technology – Normalized to an LED Bulb Data Source: Optoelectronics Industry Development Association Technology Roadmap It would have cost $5,000 in 1900 and $50,000 in 1800 to buy as much illumination as one $10 semiconductor LED bulb can deliver today.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
13 People
can
use only
so
many
lumens
per
square
foot,
eat
so
much,
or
spend
so
much
time
in
a
car,

setting limits
on
total lighting,
food
and
fuel
consumption.

But
the
appetite
for
bits
shows
no
bounds.

Even prosperity
for
emerging
economies
is
no
longer
measured
just by the
penetration
of
electricity

and light
bulbs
(though
that
is
still
vital),
but
by bits-­‐per-­‐capita.

This
is
a
radical
shift
from the
1980s

when
economists
puzzled
over
ICT’s ‘hidden’
productivity
gains.

Nobel
economist
Robert
Solow

famously
asked
in
1987: “You
can
see
the
computer
age
everywhere
but
in
the
productivity
statistics.”8
Global Wealth Correlates With ICT Penetration
Source: Telecommunications Union ICT Development Index
ICT penetration is measured as a composite of 11 deployment and availability indicators.

These
broad
ICT
trends
– declining
costs,
rising
global
demands
-­‐-­‐ are
now
being
amplified
by
the

emerging
transformation
of
the
Internet
into
what
is
being
popularly
if
loosely
termed the
Cloud,
and

the
Mobile
Internet.

The
scale
of
this
next
transformation
is
more
significant
than
that
from

mainframes
to
PCs
and
the
wired
Internet.

In
2013,
the
world
will
spend $3.8
trillion
on
ICT, on

everything
from
servers
and
network
gear,
to
software
and
telecom
services.9

How
much
electricity
is

associated
with
that
much
hardware
and
economic
activity?
The Transformation of the Information Economy Continues Source: Morgan Stanley
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
14 5. THE

INFORMATION
ECONOMY – HOW
MUCH

ELECTRICITY
DOES
IT

USE & WHERE
IS
IT
USED?
Manufacturers
now
produce
each
year
“far
more
transistors
than
the
world’s
farmers
grow
grains of

wheat
or
rice.”10 How
much
electricity
is
used
by
all
those
transistors?

The
idea
that
ICT
devices
could
be
counted
in
terms
of
their
aggregate
contribution
to
electricity
consumption
did
not
come
into
general
discussion
until
1999,
when
we
published
The
Internet
Begins

with
Coal:

A
Preliminary
Exploration
of
the
Impact
of
the
Internet
on
Electricity
Consumption.
11 Data
centers
are
the
largest and
most
easily
identified feature
of
the
infrastructure
of
the
Internet
and

the
Cloud,
but comprise just
one
part
of the
ICT ecosystem.

Still,
there
are tens
of
thousands
of
these

massive
warehouse-­‐scale
buildings,
each
consuming as
much
electricity as
an
entire
town.

Many

communities
solicit data
centers
for tech
jobs,
and
electric
and
tax
revenues,
while environmental

groups
target
them to
challenge
tech
companies’ green
bona
fides.

Where Electricity Is Consumed in the Digital Universe
Source: Digital Power Group
Does
reading
an
e-­‐book,
or
watching
a
streaming
video, use
more
energy
than
reading
it
on
paper,
or

buying
a
DVD
– counting
everything
from
mine-­‐mouth
and
forest
to
consumer?

Does
playing
a
video

game
use
more
energy
than
playing
Monopoly?

Does
a
doctor
using
an
iPad
for diagnostic
advice
from
artificial
intelligence
in
the
Cloud use
more
energy
than,
what?
Traveling
for
a
second
opinion?

The
answer
involves
more
than
knowing how
much
electricity
one iPad,
PC
or
smartphone uses.

It requires
accounting for
all
the
electricity
used in
the
entire
ICT
ecosystem needed
to
make
any
of
that
possible.

Many analyses
of
ICT
energy
use are
colored
by
motivations
that
can
either narrow
or distort
the

analytic
framework.

One
major
study
starts with:
o “Why
is
ICT
so
critical?
It
provides
intelligence
to
manage,
even
lessen
the
impact
of
the
most
imminent

threat
to our
existence:
climate
change.”12
But
none
of
the
factors
that
gave
rise
to
today’s
digital
economy
were anchored in,
or
were
motivated

by either
saving
energy
or
carbon.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
15 The
energy
characteristics
of
the
ICT
ecosystem
are
quite
unlike
anything
else
built
to
date.

Turning
on

a
light
does
not require
dozens
of
lights
to
turn
on
elsewhere.

However,
turn
on
an
iPad
to
watch
a

video and
iPad-­‐like
devices all
over
the
country,
even
all
over
the
world,
simultaneously
light
up

throughout
a
vast
network.

Nothing
else
in
society
operates
that
way.

Starting
a car
doesn’t
cause

dozens
of
cars
elsewhere
to
fire
up.

The Cloud is a Global Network of Interconnected Always-On Electricity-Consuming Devices Amongst
the
extensive
technical
literature
on
various
specific
aspects
of
ICT
energy
use,
two
recent

studies
stand
for
their
attempt
at
a comprehensive
overview, one
by
the
Boston
Consulting
Group13 and

another
by
Greenpeace,
where
the
latter
organization
noted
that:

“Data
centers
are
the
factories
of
the

21st
century
information
age
…
many
of
which
can
be
seen
from
space,
consume
a
tremendous
amount

of
electricity.”

And

“If
the
Cloud
were
a
country,
it
would
have
the
fifth
largest
electricity
demand
in

the
world.”14
Global Cloud Electric Consumption
Source: Greenpeace International, How Clean is Your Cloud, April 2012 Note: Cloud consumption here includes telecommunications infrastructure, but not the entire ICT ecosystem.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
16 There
are
four
main energy-­‐consuming
features of the
ICT
ecosystem:
• Public
and
private data
centers
which
store,
route
and
process
information;
• Wired
and
wireless private
and
public networks,
including
cellular,
WiFi and
fiber;
• End-­‐user
equipment
in
homes,
offices,
factories
and
farms;
• Factories
that
manufacture all
the
ICT
equipment.

Where Electricity is Used in the ICT Ecosystem
Data Source: Directions Towards Future Green Internet, 12th Int. Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications A
number
of
analysts have
estimated that current
electricity
consumption
in the
global
ICT
ecosystem
ranges from
1,100
to
1,800
TWh
annually.
15,16,17 This
puts global
electricity
used
by
ICT
today
in
the

same
league
as
global
lighting
energy
demand
circa
1985.

Thus
lighting
up
silicon
and
lasers
has

moved into
the
big
leagues
as an electricity-­‐consuming
sector.

However, as
we
will
explore
herein,
these
estimates
are
either
incomplete,
use
old
data,
or
use
debatable
assumptions.

Electricity for Global ICT v. Illumination – The Current Wisdom Data Source: current ICT/Cloud data per citations above; lighting data from IEA The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
17 6. ELECTRIC
DEMAND
IN
THE

ICT ECOSYSTEM
– DATA

CENTERS

[250 – 350 TWH]
The
tens
of
thousands
of
data
centers
around
the
world
comprise a
high-­‐profile
feature
of
the
ICT

architecture,
from
Iowa
and
South
Carolina18,
to
Texas19 and
California,
and
from
Ireland
to
Iceland,

and
from
China
to
India. A
300,000
sq.ft. 40
megawatt
(MW)
Facebook data
center opened
in
2012
in

North
Carolina where electric
rates
are
10-­‐30%
below
the
U.S.
national
average (the
local
grid
is 56%

coal,
32%
nuclear).

There,
the Facebook facility
will
save
$100
million
in
operating
costs compared
to

national
average rates,
20 and
use one
million
tons
of
coal
over
the
next
decade.21
The Size & Power Of Leading-Edge Data Centers Keeps Rising Source: Sun Microsystems
One
of
the
world’s
biggest
commercial
data
centers, in
Nevada,
at 400,000
square
feet
now
(seven

football
fields)
is slated
to
expand
to
two million
sq. ft.
22 Meanwhile,
the
owners
of
a $1.6
billion, 200

MW one
million-­‐square-­‐foot
data
center
under
construction
in
Chongqing,
China,
advertises there
cheap
power
(from
China’s
80 percent
coal-­‐fired
electric
grid),
not
cheap
labor,
as
their
competitive

advantage
in
pursuing
global Cloud
services.
23 Globally,
data
centers
are
estimated
to
consume
(as
of
2010)
from
250
to
350
TWh annually.
24,25,26

Where Data Centers Use Energy
Data Source: The Datacenter as a Computer: An Introduction to the Design of Warehouse-Scale Machines, Google.

Allocations vary with age, purpose, location. Cooling incl. chillers, fans, pumps; electrical incl. UPS, batteries, distribution & switch-gear.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
18 Even
as
the
efficiency
of
computing
equipment
improves,
and
radical
gains
have
been
achieved
in

overall
data
center
operational
efficiency
in
recent
years, total
global
power
needs
to
light
up
the

world’s
data
centers
keeps
rising,
nearly
doubling
in
the
past
five
years.

Global Data Centers -- Aggregated Power Trend
Data Source: Powering the Datacenter, DatacenterDynamics, 2013 One-third of global data center energy use is in U.S., but growth rates are fastest in emerging economies.

As
the
next Cloud-­‐dominated era expands,
many
existing
data
centers
will
be
gutted
and
rebuilt,
or

entirely
replaced with new
state-­‐of-­‐the-­‐art
ICT
equipment far
more
performance
per
watt
and
per

dollar,
but
also
far
more
power
per
square
foot
of
space
occupied
by
the
hardware.

The
average
data

center
in
the
U.S.,
for
example,
is
now
well
past
12 years
old
– geriatric
class
tech
by
ICT
standards.

Unlike
other
industrial-­‐classes
of
electric
demand,
newer data facilities
see
higher,
not
lower,
power

densities.

A
single
refrigerator-­‐sized
rack of
servers
in
a
data
center
already
requires more
power
than

an
entire
home,
with
the
average power
per
rack27 rising
40%
in
the
past
five
years
to
over
5 kW,
and

the
latest
state-­‐of-­‐the-­‐art
systems
hitting
26kW
per
rack on
track
to
doubling.28
Global Data Center Power Trends
Power of compute equipment by year of product introduction.

Data Source: Datacom Equipment Power Trends and Cooling Applications, ASHRE 2012 Note: ASHRE measures power as heat load.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
19 Progress
in
data
center
equipment
efficiency will
continue29,
but
forecasts
still
show substantial
growth

in data
center
energy,
and
in
some
estimates comprise
the
fastest
growing
part
of
the
ICT energy-­‐using
ecosystem in
the
next decade.
30 (Others
see
network
energy
demands
growing
faster;
explored
next.)
Electricity to Power the Cloud’s Data Centers
Source: Microsoft Global Foundation Services
If
the
above
forecast
is
roughly
accurate,
then
the
world’s
data
centers
alone
will
approach 1,000
TWh
within
a
decade
– more
than
the
total
now
used
for
all
purposes
by
Japan
and
Germany
combined.

For

many
data
centers
today,
the
cost
of
buying
computer
servers
is
now
less
than
the
cumulative
cost
of

buying
electricity
to
run
those
servers
over
their
four-­‐year
life.

As computing
hardware
costs
continue

a
long-­‐term
decline,
the
share
of
spending
and
importance
of energy
costs
increases.

Servers in Global Data Centers
Data Source: IDC
Note the number of servers includes “virtual” machines achieved by maximizing equipment use through virtualization software. Virtual machines also consume energy.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
20 Data
centers
have
entered a
new
era
in
terms
of the
character
of
traffic.

Most
data-­‐center
traffic
until

recently
was
associated
with
managing
data
flowing
to-­‐and-­‐from
users.

Intra-­‐data-­‐center
traffic
is

now
growing
far
faster
than
traffic
to-­‐and-­‐from
end-­‐users
due
to
the
rising
use of
IT
services,
remote

storage,
and
the
increasing
use
of
real-­‐time
processing
(enabled
by
high-­‐speed
user
connectivity)
such

as
mapping,
voice
recognition,
industrial
and
medical
diagnostics,
and
big
data
analytics.

The New Character of Global Data Center Traffic
Data Source: Cisco Global Cloud Index
For global data center energy use to remain unchanged, efficiency of all future and existing data centers needs to improve 300% in five years.

Now
data
centers
are
increasingly
seeing peak
demand
characteristics akin
to that
experienced
by

electric utilities – necessitating
similar,
costly,
“reserve”
capacity. Data
center
peaks necessarily
occur
contemporaneously
with expensive utility
grid
peaks.

One
solution is
to
have data
traffic
follow
cheap

power
when
available
at
other
remote facilities (requiring
reserve
data
capacity
at
those
facilities).

Some
of
the
additional
facility
costs may
be
offset
by
using
software
and
hardware
to
replace expensive
back-­‐up
power
gear
(used
for
local
reliability)
to
enable
instead
a “graceful”
failover
to
another
data

center in
the
event
of
power
failure,
and
used
for
smoothly
transferring
traffic
to
cheaper
power

locations
when
called
for.
31 Utility-Class Peak Demand Challenge Comes to Data Centers Data Source: Cisco Video Networking Index
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
21 The
universe
of
data
centers
is
rapidly
expanding and construction
outside
of
the
U.S.
is
growing
at

twice
the
pace
of
North
America.

Many
are
located
where
power
is
cheap and
bandwidth
available,

others where
power
is
more
expensive
but
proximity
to
markets
is
critical.

As
fast
as
the
speed
of
light

is,
computing
is so
fast
that
distances
to
data
centers
of
only
a
few
tens
of
miles
are
possible
for
“real

time”
exchanges
for
such
things
as
critical
backups,
financial
transactions,
or
increasingly
common
dynamic
real-­‐time
activities
such
as navigation.

Thus
when
speed
matters
proximity
matters
too,
and

data
center
operators
can’t
follow
cheaper
power
but
are
captive
to
local
power
rates.

The criticality of electricity for
data
centers
is
evident in
the
global spending
on
technology
and

software
to
manage
data-­‐center
power,
a $15
billion
annual
industry now, forecast
to triple
to
$45

billion
in
five
years.
32 Data Centers Across the U.S. & Europe
(Location & Number at Each Location)
Source: Data Center Map
A global site with a map of over 2,500 enterprise class co-location data centers: i.e., excludes ~ 9,000 other enterprise class data centers such as Apple, Google, and other private enterprises, governments and research, and excludes thousands of communications data centers.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
22 7. ELECTRIC
DEMAND
IN
THE

ICT ECOSYSTEM
– COMMUNICATIONS

NETWORKS
[250 – 600 TWH]
Networks
are
comprised
of
transport
hardware
in
the
wired
(fiber,
coax,
and
legacy
copper)
and

wireless
domains
(cellular,
WiMax,
and
WiFi.)

Today’s
high-­‐speed
wireless
networks
enable

smartphones and
tablets to
display streaming
video
anytime
and
anywhere.

Where Networks Use Electricity
Data Source: A Review of Energy Efficiency in Telecommunication Networks, Koutitas, et al, Telfor Journal.

Estimates
of global
network
electricity
use
range
from
250
to
400
TWh.
33,34,35,36 But
the
traffic
in
the

communications
world
has
changed
dramatically in
the
few years
since
all
these
estimates
were
made.

Current
published
estimates
of
the
energy
used
by
networks
are based
on
data
typically
predating

2010,
and
much
of
that is
anchored
in
measurements
and
analyses
performed
earlier,
wherein
a

common
reference
in
many
reports
is
a
2007
Ericsson
analysis.

The
iPhone
was
introduced
in
2007

and
networks
have
experienced
unprecedented
increases
in
traffic
since the
introduction
of

smartphones
and
tablets. U.S.
mobile
traffic,
for
example,
rose
400%
since
2010.
37 How Wireless Networks Use Electricity
Data Source: Cellular Networks with Embodied Energy, IEEE Network Data transmission is inherently more energy efficient on wires and fiber than radio, where the RF amplifier is the biggest energy-user.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
23 At
the
end
of
2012 there
were

3.2 billion
cellular
subscribers,
of
which 1.2
billion
were broadband
subscribers
– the
latter
is
twice
as
many
as the total
land-­‐line
broadband
subscriptions.38

Not only
are

there
a
lot
more
people
on
wireless
networks,
but
the
traffic
on
those
networks
has
grown
faster.

Consequently,
total
mobile
traffic
is
up
some
400-­‐fold
since
2007,
and that growth
came
almost
entirely
from broadband
data not
voice use.

Growth in Global Mobile Traffic
Data Source: Ericsson Mobility Report: June 2013
Data is based on global field measurements of traffic on over 1,000 mobile networks (excludes M2M, WiFi) Could
improvements in
cellular network energy
efficiency
over
the
past
half-­‐dozen
years
have
offset
a
400-­‐fold
rise
in
traffic?
Nothing
in
the
literature
suggests anything
close
to
such
gains.
39 One
major
cellular network
operator
recently published
data
on
the
impact
of
these traffic trends.

China
Mobile
claims a
50%
improvement
in
their
system
energy
efficiency
over
the
past
half-­‐dozen

years,
but
overall
electricity
use
grew
far
more
rapidly
than
the
rise in the number
of
subscribers
and

base
stations – a
phenomenon
that
began
contemporaneous
with broadband
wireless.

China Mobile’s Energy Consumption & Wireless Base Station Growth Data Source: China Mobile Research Institute
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
24 China
Mobile’s
experience suggests
that
current
estimates
of
global network energy
use are
low.

Extrapolating
China
Mobile’s
experience,
where pre-­‐broadband
trends
would
have
yielded a
6 TWh

system
by 2011
rather
than the
12 TWh realized,
today’s
global
network
energy
number
is
also
likely

far greater
than
the
prevailing
estimates
of
250
-­‐ 400
TWh
– perhaps it
is
more
like 500
– 800
TWh.

Even
assuming
lower
broadband
penetration
and
greater
efficiency
gains than
in
China,
the
upper

bound
estimate
for
global
network
energy
use is
likely closer
to 600
TWh.

Even more
grid demand
will
emerge
in
due
course
as
many
diesel-­‐powered
cell
towers
convert
to
grid

power.

Of
the
world’s
four
million
base
stations,
one
million
were
added
since
2007 of
which one-­‐third

are currently
off-­‐grid using diesel generators.40

With
diesel-­‐electric
power as
much
as 10 times
more
costly than
for
grid-­‐connected
towers,
wireless
operators
will
convert
as
fast
as
feasible.

Growth in Mobile Base Stations in Emerging Nations
Data Source: Green Cellular Networks: A Survey, Some Research Issues and Challenges, IEEE The migration
to
mobile
broadband
is
driven
by
the
advent
of
high-­‐speed wireless
data;
up
100-­‐fold
in

a
decade
and
rising another
10-­‐fold
over
the
next
five
years.41

Carriers
are finding that smartphone

and
tablet
users
consume surprising
amounts
of
data
when fast
broadband
networks
are
offered.
42 The Growth in Maximum Wireless Data Rates
Data Source: IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
25 The
new
high-­‐speed
LTE
networks
that
accelerate
the mobile
Internet require up
to
three
times
more

data
per
hour
per
task
compared
to
the
previous slower
3G
networks,
and
thus
more
energy.
43 And

compared
to
2G
networks,
LTE energy
consumption
is
60 times
greater to
offer
the
same coverage.44
The Rising Share of Higher-Speed More Energy-Intensive Wireless Broadband Data Source: The Mobile Economy 2013, GSMA and ATKearney The world’s wireless networks are transitioning to high-speed broadband hardware.

Base
station
power
requirements
increase
as
wireless
broadband
speed
increases.

The Power Cost of Cellular Speed on High-Speed LTE Networks Data Source: Energy Aware Radio and neTwork tecHnologies Engineers are proposing implementing “sleep” mode software to reduce base-station energy use when traffic use is lower.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
26 Global Internet
traffic
is
going
mobile.

Migration
to
the
wireless
Internet
is
happening
fastest
in

emerging
markets, but
is
occurring
everywhere.
45 The
same
amount
of
data
carried
on
wireless

networks
consumes
far
more
energy
than
when
transported
on
‘wires’
(fiber
optics).

Mobile
data

traffic
doubled
in
the
past
year
and
is
forecast
to
rise
10-­‐fold
in
five
years.
46 (At
the
same
time,
wired

network
traffic
also
grows
to
transport
the
data
from
wireless
nodes
back
to
the
Cloud’s
data
centers).

Share of Internet Traffic on Wireless Networks For the Last Mile Data Source: Meeker, KPCB
Global
traffic
on
mobile
networks
is
expanding
at
historically
unprecedented
rates,
rising
from
today’s

20 to
over
150
exabytes a
year
within
a
half
decade.

While
today’s
networks
energy
use
ranges from

1.5 to
over
15 kWh/GB
of
traffic,
47 overall
network
energy
efficiency
will
need
to
improve
nearly
10-­‐
fold in
five
years
to
keep
total
system energy
use
from
rising
substantially.

Global Mobile Network Traffic
Data Source: CTIA Semi-Annual Wireless Industry Survey, 2013 The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
27 The
underlying
architecture
of
all
communications
networks
have become
both
digital
and
migrated

increasingly
onto
the
Internet.

There
has thus been
a
blurring of
the
line between
data
centers and

telecommunications
facilities for
which
there
are
thousands
of
the
latter located
across
the
United

States
and
around
the
world.

The cost
to
power
such
facilities
is
necessarily
dictated
by
local
rates.

Locations of U.S. Telecommunications Central Offices – Communications Data Centers Source: Marigold Technologies
The
“last
mile”
of
the
world’s
phone infrastructure
is
morphing from
the
century-­‐old
wired
standard to

wireless;
common
in emerging
nations and
30%
of
U.S.
homes
have
only a
wireless
phone.

The wired

last-­‐mile system used less energy
and
was
easy
to
power since
all
electricity
came from central
offices.

Wireless
energy-­‐per-­‐customer
is
much greater, requiring
power
in
three
locations, central
office, cell
towers,
and
at the customer,
multiplying
the energy and
the
challenge
of keeping
everything lit
24x7.

Locations of U.S. Wireless Cell Towers
Source: Tower Maps
Note:
none
of
the
energy
associated
with
the
radio
and
TV
broadcast
networks
has been
included
here
or
elsewhere
even
though
that infrastructure
is merging into the
Cloud.

ESPN’s
broadcast
operation
is

functionally
the same
as a
major
data
center
or
communications
central
office.48
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
28 8.

ELECTRIC
DEMAND
IN
THE
ICT ECOSYSTEM -- END-­‐USE
DEVICES [460 – 1,200 TWH]
Tracking
the
energy-­‐use
of thousands
of
types of
end-­‐use
devices
in
homes,
business
and
factories

requires
making
assumptions
rather
than
measurements,
in
particular
about how
devices
are
used
and

how
often.

And
assumptions
are
made
about
whether and
how
much to
count
the
increasingly

common
ICT
features
in
old
dumb
appliances.

Now
TV
is the
biggest
variable
in
digital
energy
accounting
as
all
forms
of
video increasingly
become
part
of
the digital
ecosystem.

Global Consumer Electricity Uses
Data Source: Overview of World-Wide Energy Consumption of Consumer Electronics and Energy Savings Opportunities, NRDC Current
estimates
of
global
electricity
used
by
digital devices in
the
global
residential
and
commercial

sector ranges from
460
to
550
TWh
annually.
49 This
puts
home
computing
in
the
same
range
as

electricity
used
for
residential
lighting,
or
refrigeration.50

But
that
range doesn’t account
for
all

current
ICT
end-­‐uses
and
new
trends. Aside from ignoring
the
increasingly
common,
but
relatively

small loads
from ICT
embedded
in old
‘dumb’
appliances,
the
current
ICT
end-­‐use
estimates
have
little

or
no accounting
for
digital TVs.
51 Also
typically
omitted,
or
under-­‐counted,
is
the
TV set-­‐top
box
which
can
alone
use as
much
electricity
annually
as
a
refrigerator.52
Typical Electricity Use Per Residence
(excluding heating/cooling of air and water)
Data Source: EIA & IEA Gadgets and Gigawatts, Policies for Energy Efficient Electronics The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
29 Studies
focused
on TVs
and
set-­‐top
boxes estimate
U.S.
consumption
at 90 -­‐ 100 TWh.
53,54 Globally,
TVs

are
estimated
to
use 400
-­‐ 700
TWh,
55,56,57 a
total
that
is
comparable
to
prevailing estimates
for all end-­‐
use
ICT
loads.

Digital
TV
is
often
(erroneously)
allocated a
minimal
share of
the
ICT
ecosystem’s

energy
use.

Allocating only
20%
of
TVs to
the
Internet
would
add
about
80 to
140 TWh
to the
previous

cited
ICT
end-­‐use
energy,
increasing
the maximum
estimated global
total
to
690 TWh.

Global TV & Set-Top Box Electricity Use – as of 2008
Data Source: IEA, Ericsson
Netflix began streaming to TVs in 2008, now serves 25 million U.S. consumers, illustrating the rapid recent changes. 58 [Note: Above illustrates high range from Ericsson]
The
migration
of
TV
to
the
Internet
will
dominate
ICT end-­‐use
energy
for
years (and
for
networks
and

data
centers
as
well).

The
share
of
TVs
that
will
be
digital
is
forecast
to
reach 50%
by
2020.59

And

before
long,
another
video
growth
cycle
begins
as the
next
era
of
displays
emerges with glasses-­‐free

3D,
and
also
wall-­‐scale
displays. DisplayWalls
will
shortly
move
from
the
rarified
worlds
of
research

and
military
domains, and
Hollywood
imaginations,
to ubiquity.
60 Global Trends In Digital TV – Assimilation Into The Cloud Data Source: IEA, Gadgets and Gigawatts, Policies for Energy Efficient Electronics The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
30 Video
game
consoles,
inherently
computing-­‐centric
and
increasingly
Internet-­‐connected,
are
another

variable
in
the
end-­‐use
accounting
also
often omitted
or
under-­‐counted.

Global
electric
use
from
game

consoles
is
estimated
to
be
30 to
60 TWh.61 Each
generation
of
game console
has
exhibited
rising
power
requirements (on
average
doubling
in
the
past
decade)
and
the
games
are
increasingly
played

online,
thus
adding
a
network
traffic
(and
power)
load.

Video Game Trends – Power-Hungry Consoles & The Rise of Online Gaming Data Source: Wedbush, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Wall Street Journal And
then
there
is
the
multi-­‐device
per
user phenomenon.

When
a
family
has
more
cars than
registered

drivers,
the
extra
cars
cannot be used
simultaneously.

That
is
not
the
case
for ICT
devices that can, and

often
are
operating simultaneously.

Proliferation of Multiple Digital Devices Per U.S. Household Data Source: EIA, How Americans are Using Energy in Homes Today The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
31 Yet
further
under-­‐counting
of
ICT
energy
use
arises
from
the
legacy
approach to data collection.

EIA’s

estimate
for office
PCs
and
monitors does
not
include all
the
energy
used
by
equipment
in
the
IT

‘closets’
of commercial
buildings.

We
can find
the
rest of
commercial
ICT hardware in a catch-­‐all

category
labeled
“other” by
EIA,
a
‘bucket’ created
in
the pre-­‐Internet era
to
aggregate myriad devices

which collectively used to
use
very
little electricity -­‐-­‐ coffee
makers,
water
pumps,
service
station

gasoline
station
pumps,
CAT
and
MRI and
x-­‐ray machines,
ATMs,
elevators,
and
escalators,
and
“telecommunication equipment.”62
“Other” has
grown
to
become
the
largest
single
electricity-­‐using category
in the
commercial
sector,

accounting
for
30%
more
energy
than lighting. 63,
64 Electricity In The U.S. Commercial Sector– ‘Hidden’ ICT Loads Swept Up In “Other” Uses Data Source: EIA, ICF, How Small Devices are Having a Big Impact on U.S. Utility Bills Increased use
of such
things
as
escalators
and
gasoline
pumps
is extraordinarily
unlikely
to
account
for

the
size
and
growth of “other”
electricity
uses.

In
fact,
recent
analysis
found
that
of the
500
TWh
in
“other”
only
150
TWh
can
be
allocated
to coffee
makers,
distribution
transformers,
EVs
used
indoors,

medical
gear
(MRI,
CT,
X-­‐ray),
elevators,
escalators,
water
pumping
and
treatment.65

This
leaves
350

TWh
unaccounted
for
in
the
“other” where
we
find,
as
noted, “telecommunications
equipment.”

Allocating
only
half
of that 350
TWh
to ICT
equipment (specifying
here that
there
remains
no

explanation
for
what
hardware uses
the
rest),
increases
the
estimate
of total
U.S.
commercial
sector
ICT

end-­‐use
to
nearly
250
TWh.

Extrapolating
the
U.S.
figure
globally,
this
implies as
much
as 600
TWh
of
electricity
may
be
omitted
in
current
world-­‐wide commercial
sector ICT
accounting,
increasing the
upper
range
for
all
ICT
end-­‐use
to roughly
1,200
TWh.
66 There
is
yet more uncounted
ICT end-­‐use in
all
the devices operating
and
embedded
in
industrial
equipment.

While
the
ICT
portion
of
such equipment is
a
small
share
of
the
inherent
energy
use
of
the

hardware in
which
it
is
embedded,
that
does
not
obviate
the
fact
that
the
ICT
piece is a
new
electric-­‐
using
feature.

(For
example,
a
smart
digital
motor
will
use
less
electricity
overall,
but
the
embedded

logic
devices
are
new
ICT
loads,
and
as
that
device
increasingly
connects
to
the
Cloud,
it
will
drive

collateral
ICT
electric
use
there
too.)

Finally,
in
due
course, we
will
see
the emergence
of
– all-­‐electric
–
3D
printing migrating manufacturing
into a
new
more
digital
and
electrified
era.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
32 9. ELECTRIC
DEMAND
IN
THE
ICT ECOSYSTEM – MANUFACTURING [560 – 800 TWH]
It
takes
energy,
dominantly
electricity,
to
manufacture
ICT hardware.

Building one
PC
uses about
the

same
amount
of
energy
as
making
a
refrigerator, for
example.67 Annualized,
the energy
to
fabricate a

PC
is
three
to
four times that
of a
refrigerator because
the
latter
is
used three to
four times
longer.
68 Even
enterprise
hardware
is
replaced
frequently.

Data
center
operators rank rapid
adoption
of
new

tech as
a
higher
priority
than
product
lifespan by
a
71%
to
26%
margin.
69 The
faster ICT
products are

obsoleted,
the
greater
the manufacturing
energy.

The
obsolescence rate
is,
if
anything,
accelerating.

Semiconductors
dominate energy
in
ICT
manufacturing.

It
takes
1 -­‐ 2
kWh
to
make a square

centimeter
of
microprocessor.70 The
world’s
$300
billion/year
semiconductor
industry
produces

hundreds
of
billions
of
square
centimeters.71

At the
end
of
useful
life
the
silicon
device
has no inherent

material
or
energy
value
– it’s trash. The embodied
energy
can’t
be
recycled;
it
has
been
consumed.

Energy Embodied in Manufacturing a Cellular Base Station Data Source: IEEE
Cumulative capital investment in the hardware of the U.S. cellular network alone now approaches $400 billion.72 As
new
more
complex
ICT
technologies
are
adopted,
embodied
energy
increasingly
dominates the
total

life-­‐cycle
energy
picture.

It
takes
years
before
the
electricity
to
operate
a
cellular
base
station
equals

the
energy
embodied
in
manufacturing
it.

As
system
operators
accelerate
equipment
upgrades
and

expansion,
to bring
new
features
and
to reduce
electricity
costs,
those expenditure
not
only
increase

manufacturing
energy
use,
but
have
the
effect
of
shifting future
operational
energy
savings
to

immediate,
possibly
greater, energy
used
in manufacturing.

Embodied v. Operating Energy For A Cellular Base Station Data Source: IEEE
Embodied energy accounted for 25% of a cellular network’s total life-cycle energy use in 2005 and grew to 43% by 2007.73 The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
33 For
a
smartphone, the
embodied
energy
ranges
from
70 to
90%
of
the electricity
the
phone will
use

over
its
life,
counting
recharging
its
battery.
74,75,76 Thus, the energy
use
of
smartphone
itself
(i.e.,

excluding
networks
and
data
centers)
is
totally
dominated
by
manufacturing,
not
by
the
efficiency
of

say
the phone’s
wall-­‐charger or
battery.

This
is
quite
unlike
other
consumer
products.

For a
refrigerator,
embodied
energy
is
just 4%
of
total life-­‐cycle energy;
power
to
run
the
fridge

dominates.
77 For
a
car,
only
20%
of
life-­‐cycle
energy
is
in manufacturing;
burning
gasoline
over
the

car’s
life accounts
for
80%
– the
inverse
of
the
smartphone.

(There
are
‘hidden’
network
energy
costs

associated
with
cars,
for
example
– highways,
refineries,
etc.
– but
pro
rata
allocation
is
de
minimis,

unlike
ICT
networks
where
network
energy
costs
are
enormous
and
can
dominate,
as
covered
herein.).

Energy Associated With Manufacturing And Charging a Cell Phone (excludes wireless networks, data centers, etc.)
Data Source: Nokia
Steel & aluminum comprise 60% of the embodied energy of a car,78 offering easy energy-saving recycling. Under 10% of cell phone embodied energy is associated with bulk materials; semiconductors dominate. 79 “Transport” is moving materials to factories, product to consumers.

Current
estimates
put
global ICT
equipment
manufacturing
between 400 and
750
TWh annually,

counting
PCs,
peripherals,
network
gear
and
data
centers.
80,81 There
is
considerable
variability
in
the

literature
on manufacturing
energy
intensity,
in
part
because
much
information
is
proprietary.
82 And

most
estimates under-­‐count
or
don’t
include
TVs.

Incorporating
only 20%
of
the
700
million
TVs made
a
year adds about 80 TWh,
bringing
the
ICT
manufacturing
total
upper
bound to over 800
TWh.

Finally,
completely
unaccounted
– electricity
used
by
the
$300
billion
industry
that
produces
software.

Energy Associated With Manufacturing All The Hardware In the ICT Ecosystem Data Source: As cited in text above
Current analyses omit or under-count TVs & also use 2011 data for smartphones and tablets– both of which have doubled since then.83 The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
34 Prevailing estimates
of
ICT
manufacturing
energy
under-­‐count today’s reality
given recent growth
in

both
end-­‐use
devices
and infrastructure.

The
number
of
cell
towers
globally (and
in
the
U.S.)
has

grown
50%
in
the
past
five
years84 – a
period
that
post-­‐dates
data
used
in
most analyses.

And
now
the

global
ICT
ecosystem is
expanding
into
every
segment
of
the
economy
from
industrial
machines to
health
care
to
transportation, where
machine data
accounts for
a
rising
share
of the
Internet.85

Engineers
talk
of
“planetary-­‐scale
RFID”
where
sensors
will track
not
just
high-­‐value
assets,
but

everything
from
flowers
to individual pills.
86 Rise of the Machines – Share of Digital Universe Coming from Machine Data Data Source: EMC and IDC Digital Universe 2013
As sensors and wireless network costs collapse, the quantity of machine data rises as does its share of the Internet ecosystem.

This
all
implies
more
growth
in
semiconductor
manufacturing
for the
Cloud’s
ecosystem.

The

industrial
and
automotive
use of semiconductors
is
forecast
to grow
as
much
as
that
in
the
data
market

by 201587 -­‐-­‐ the
average
car
will
have
$500
of
semiconductors
by
2015,
compared
to
$340
today.

(This

will
collaterally
increase
digital
network
traffic
too,
as
everything
in cars
increasingly connects to
the

Internet.) A
10%
share
of
just
residential
“things”
becoming
smart
will
lead to
a
30%
rise
in total

semiconductor
demand.
88 Notably,
China
has
about
50%
global
market
share
in semiconductor

manufacturing, where
80%
of
the
electricity
is
supplied
by
coal.89
Global Sales of Semiconductors –– Growing Fast For The Machine-to-Machine Internet Data Source: PwC, 2012
Growth in sales undercounts the growth in devices shipped due to declining average unit prices.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
35 10. ELECTRIC
DEMAND
IN
THE
ICT ECOSYSTEM – PUTTING
IT
ALL

TOGETHER
[1,100 – 2,800 TWH]
Estimates
of
ICT
energy
use are based
on many assumptions,
notably
for
example
what
share
of TV
to

allocate.

Most estimates originate in data from
the
pre-­‐tablet
and
pre-­‐smartphone era,
pre-­‐dating

growth
in
traffic
and
energy
use
from wireless
broadband.
90 And
even
the
precision
of
estimates for
data
centers
masks
the
fact
that
much is inferred
and
not
based
on
actual
(proprietary)
consumption.

Estimated Global Electricity Used in the ICT Ecosystem
Most
current
estimates
likely
understate
global
ICT
energy use
by
as
much
as
1,000
TWh since
up-­‐to-­‐
date
data
are
unavoidably
“omitted”.

At
the
mid-­‐point
of
the
likely
range of
energy
use,
the
total
ICT

ecosystem now consumes about
10%
of
world
electricity
supplied
for
all
purposes. For
ICT energy
use

to
‘only’
double over
the
next
decade (as
illustrated below),
huge gains
in
efficiency will
be needed
– at

a
time
when
efficiency
gains
in
ICT
have
slowed.
91 ICT
will likely
consume triple
the
energy
of
all
EVs
in

the
world
by
2030 (assuming an optimistic
200
million EV goal).92 Or, in
other terms,
transporting
bits

now
uses
50% more
energy than world aviation,
and
will
likely
use
twice
as
much by
2030.
93 Global Trends in Electricity Use
Data Source: For EVs, Polk & calculation; lights from IEA; Cloud from this report.

One industry analysis forecasts 2020 ICT energy use at 140% of today’s level.94 Greenpeace estimates it will triple in a decade.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
36 11. ELECTRIC
DEMAND
IN
THE
ICT ECOSYSTEM – WHERE
DOES
& WHERE

WILL THE
POWER
COME
FROM?
The
ICT
ecosystem
has
joined
the
ranks
of
major
energy-­‐consuming
features
of
the
global
economy.

One
recent
global
survey
found: “Energy
cost
and
availability
is
the
#1
worry
of
data
center

operators.”95

The
result
is
unsurprising.

A
typical
data
centers
costs roughly
$7
million
per
megawatt
to
build,
and
another $9 million
per
megawatt
for
the
cost
of electricity
over the
facility’s
10-­‐year

operating
life,
assuming
low-­‐cost
power.
96 Thus,
for
example,
a single
50 MW
enterprise
data
center

sited
in
Iowa (70%
coal,
25%
wind) instead
of
higher
cost
California (no
coal),
saves
$350 million
in

electricity
expenses over
the
life
of
that single data
center.

But
80%
of
global
ICT
electricity
use
is
highly
dispersed
and
not consumed at the visible
warehouse-­‐
scale
data
centers.

Thus
the
cost
and
availability
of
electricity
for
the
Cloud
is
dominated
by
the
same

realities
as
for
society
at
large
– obtaining
electricity
at
the
highest
availability
and the
lowest
possible

cost.

In
all scenarios,
global
ICT
electric
use
is
growing,
perhaps
much
more
dramatically
than
most
analysts

realize.

The
implications
of
the
trends
summarized
herein
have
not
gone
unnoticed
in
scientific
circles.
“As
the
use
of
the
Internet
continues
to
grow
and
massive
computing
facilities
are
demanding

that
performance
keep
doubling,
devoting
corresponding
increases
in
the
nation’s
electrical

energy
capacity
to
computing
may
become
too
expensive.”
The
Future
of
Computing
Performance:

Game
Over
or
Next
Level? National
Academy
of
Sciences
In
every
credible
forecast
-­‐-­‐ including
from
the
EIA,
IEA,
BP,
Exxon
-­‐-­‐ coal
continues
to
be the
largest

single
source
of
electricity
for
the world.

Coal’s dominance
arises
from
the
importance
of
keeping
costs

down
while providing
ever-­‐greater
quantities
of
electricity
to
the
growing economies,
and
as
the
IEA

recently
noted,
the
absence
of
cost-­‐effective
alternatives
at
the
scales
the
world
needs.97

The
IEA
also

forecasts that
the
second
largest
source
of
new
electricity
will come
from
renewables
– perhaps
for

some
there
is
irony
in the
digital
ecosystem
being
fueled
by
the
combination
of
coal
and
renewables
in

partnership,
wherein
the
former
provides
the
essential
low-­‐cost
and
high-­‐availability
base.

In
an
ever-­‐more
digital
economy,
the
demand
for
reliability
rises
even
faster.

However,
a
global
survey

of
utilities
in 43
countries
found
46%
of executives
in
the
mature
markets
expect current
utility
trends

to
increase
the
risks
of
blackouts
by
2030,
only
18%
see a
decreased
risk.
98 Global Electricity Supply – Everything Grows & Coal Dominates Data Source: 2013 Outlook for Energy ExxonMobil
Coal is the largest single source of new global electric supply over the past two decades, and continues to be so for the next two, and remains at or near today’s 40% for global supply even in 2025.
99 The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
37 The
growth
in
the
energy-­‐intensive
wireless
Internet
in
emerging
markets
is
occurring

contemporaneously
with
rising
electricity
costs.

Rising
ICT
loads
add
additional
pressure
to
local

utility
decisions
relating
to
the
pursuit
of
reliable
low-­‐cost
electricity.

Cost of Power for Wireless Networks in Latin America
Data Source: Telefonica
Average cost trends for power-to-the-tower in six Latin-American countries.

In the
ICT
ecosystem power
has
to
be
available
at
the
same
time that
information flows.

This
reality

means
that
decision
to
use,
for
example,
increasing
amounts
of
energy
from
wind
turbines
creates
a

challenge
-­‐-­‐ while
the
overall
availability
of
wind
power
is
in
the
20 to
30%
range,
when
the
wind
is

available
it
is
on average out
of
phase
with
data
traffic
demand.

Conventional
power
plants
operate

24x7 and
have
80 to
90%
availability.

For
wind
farms
to
be
a
viable
supplement
to
info-­‐centric
power

needs,
other
power
plants
are
needed
to
anchor
the
network. In
most
of
the
world,
the
power

networks
are
anchored by power
plants
fueled
with coal,
uranium or natural
gas.

Typical Daily Cycles:

Data Center Traffic & Power Demand v. Wind Power Output Data Source: Akamai, RISO National Laboratory
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
38 APPENDIX A -­‐-­‐ DOES
USING
THE
CLOUD
SAVE
ENERGY?
A
cloud
architecture enables services
to
be
accessible
from
multiple
end-­‐use
devices,
any
time
and

anywhere.

By
“Cloud”
here
we’re
not
referring
to
the
entire
Internet’s
infrastructure (as
we
have

loosely
done
so
in
the
preceding
paper),
but
to
the
business
of
using
remote
centralized
data
centers
to

replace local
on-­‐site computing.

Cloud services offer convenience
and
cost
savings
that
come from
sharing hardware
and
software in warehouse-­‐scale
computing, whether storing
movies,
photos
and

personal
data,
or scientific
and
industrial
data-­‐crunching
and research,
and
much
more
yet.

Doing
the
same compute-­‐store
tasks
in
the
Cloud
instead
of
on
a
local PC
can
also
reduce total
ICT

energy
use
because
of
the
efficiency
of
using
remote
shared
resources.

Recent
studies
have
calculated

these energy
savings.
100 Sharing
in
the
Cloud
is,
in
energy
efficiency
terms,
equivalent
to
taking
the

train
instead
of
driving.

But
looking
more
expansively
at
such
analyses one
finds that
“…under
some
circumstances cloud

computing
can
consume
more
energy than
computing
on
a
local
PC.”101 Those
circumstance
are
when
a user
accesses
the
Cloud
frequently.

Energy Used For Storing Data -- Local PC v. Cloud Storage The Impact of Instagram, DropBox, Carbonite
Data Source: Green Cloud Computing
A laptop hard drive operates at ~1 watt whether accessing a photo twice a day (~ 0.1 downloads/hr) or accessing 100 photos. As download frequency rises the Cloud can consume over 10 times more energy to store and access information than storing on a laptop.

The
key energy variable
in Cloud analyses is
the
feature
that
enables
the
Cloud in
the
first
place – high-­‐
speed,
often
wireless, connections.

Wireless
energy
consumption
is
now
on
track
to
become
a

significant
factor.

Energy
use
in
the
networks
is
often
ignored
or
under-­‐counted, and
when
included

may
assume
only
the
use
of
highly
efficient
land-­‐line
connections
that
are
frequently
used
in
business

applications,
but
ever
less
frequently
used
by
consumers
– or
even
by
businesses
in
emerging
markets

where
(energy-­‐intensive)
wireless
broadband
is
becoming
the
standard
form
of
connection. 102,
103
o Wireless
networks
use
the
energy
in
1 pound
of
coal
to
transport
1 GB.
104
If
lower
costs
and
greater
convenience
of
using
Cloud
services
leads
to
significantly
more data
use
–
and
collaterally
greater
use
of
networks
-­‐-­‐ overall
energy
consumption will
rise.

In
(simplistic)
energy

terms,
this
would
be
the
equivalent
of
taking
a
cross-­‐country
train
ride,
and
using
the
financial
savings

to
take long
car
trips
at
each
stop.

The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
39 Listening
just
once to
a
song
stored
in
the
Cloud uses less
energy
than
purchasing
and
shipping a
CD,

taking
into
account
manufacturing
and
transport
energy.

Listening to
the
song
a
couple
of
dozen
times

leads
to more overall energy
used, largely because
of greater
use
of
the
networks.
105

The
Cloud
uses

more
energy
streaming a
high-­‐def
movie just
once
than
does
fabricating
and
shipping a
DVD.106
In
the case
of
Cloud-­‐based
software-­‐as-­‐a-­‐service,
as the
speed
(frame
rate) rises
to
refresh the
local

device
-­‐-­‐ e.g., stream
video
-­‐-­‐ Cloud
energy
exceeds a
local
PC as speeds exceed
about
5MB/second.

Software -- Local PC v. Cloud
Software and movies in the Cloud – e.g. Netflix
Data Source: Green Cloud Computing
In
the
case
of
processing-­‐as-­‐a-­‐service
– e.g.,
for
data-­‐intensive
tasks
such
as
converting
video
files
to

MPEGs,
or
the
equivalent in
medical
or industrial
analytics
-­‐-­‐ the
Cloud
uses
less
energy so long
as
tasks
are performed
only
occasionally;
greater
frequency
or
more
data-­‐intense
tasks increase overall energy.

Thus
future
Cloud
energy
use
depends
on
whether
the
low-­‐cost
and
convenience
of
Cloud
services
ends

up
encouraging
greater
data use (and, as
explored
previously,
whether
data
traffic
grows
faster
than

gains
in
network
efficiency).

So
far
in
the history
of
ICT,
lower
costs
and
greater
convenience
have

driven
astronomical
increase
in
global
data
traffic;
it
is
hard
to
see
why
that
trend
will
stop
now.

Processing -- Local PC v. Cloud
Amazon Elastic Cloud, Google Cloud Compute Engine
Data Source: Green Cloud Computing
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
40 An EU
project
directed
at
reducing
cellular
energy
use
– because
the
“networks
are
increasingly

contributing to
global
energy
consumption”
-­‐-­‐ identified technologies that
can
yield a
70%
reduction
in

energy
per
byte
transported.
107

But,
global
mobile
traffic
is forecast
to
rise
20-­‐fold
in
five
years.

There
are many ideas for
improving network
efficiency:
genetic
algorithms
that
adapt
to
usage,
smart

antennas,
spectrum
sharing,
new power
supplies,
amplifiers,
etc.108 One
solution
to
reduce
cell
tower
congestion
and
energy
use is
to
move
traffic
to
in-­‐building
WiFi
and miniature
cell
‘towers’.

Tiny
cigar-­‐
box
sized
cell
‘towers’
are
used
increasingly;
2 million
shipped
this
year,
with 37
million forecast
by
2016.109

Traffic
on
millions
of
such picocells
or
femtocells,
and
on
WiFi, does
not
eliminate
energy,
it

moves
it onto
other
hardware.

Such highly dispersed
networks
may
increase overall energy use when

counting
both the
in-­‐building
network
energy,
and
the
energy
to
manufacture millions
of
picocells.
110
The Impact of Counting The Embodied Energy In Increasing the Number of Cell ‘Towers’ Data Source: Cellular Networks with Embodied Energy, IEEE Network More base stations lowers per-tower energy use & traffic congestion; total energy use rises when including embodied manufacturing energy.

There
is
a
new factor;
at
the
core
of
the
global
Internet
all
of
traffic
ultimately
moves
through
high-­‐
speed
fiber-­‐optic
Internet
exchange
points
(IXPs).

Engineers
have
achieved
a 10,000
fold
improvement

in
IXP speeds since
the
1980s.111

But
the
rate
of
improvement
hit
a
physics
wall
around
2005.

Future

traffic
growth
will
require
new,
different
and
more
hardware.

Speed Of Fiber Optic Networks At Global Internet Traffic Exchange Points (IXP) Data Source: OECD Digital Economy Papers
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
41 APPENDIX
B -­‐-­‐ THE
IMPACT
OF

EFFICIENCY
ON
(ICT) ELECTRICITY
DEMAND
Improving
the
energy
efficiency
of
ICT
equipment
will
not
halt growth
in
ICT
electricity
use.

In
fact,

improvements
in
computing
efficiency have
been core
driving
force
increasing
ICT
traffic, and
thus

energy
use. Improved computing
efficiency
made the
Internet
possible and
at
least
1,000
times
more

total
energy
is
used
in
ICT
today
compared
to
when
the
Internet
launched.

Gains
in ICT
device
efficiency
have
been
on-­‐going
since
the
dawn
of
computing,
leading to
more
overall

ICT
energy
use as
the
use
of
more
efficient
data
grows
far
faster.

Computing Energy Efficiency v. Computing Energy Consumption Computing is 10 million times more efficient than at the dawn of computing; total computing energy use increased 100,000 fold.

At the energy efficiency of computing in the early 1970s, one iPad would use as much electricity as 12,000 IBM mainframes of that era. 112 A
single
1995
era
microprocessor
running
24x7
consumes about
40 pounds
of
coal
a
year
(@40%
coal
generation).

A
2012
CPU
is
much
more
efficient;
it
operates 30
times
faster
while using only
10 times

more power.

But
the
2012
CPU burns
400
pounds
of
coal
a
year,
and
there
are
far more
energy-­‐
efficient
2012
CPUs
in
the
world
than
there
were
inefficient
ones
in
1995.

The
inexorable
exponential
decline
in
energy
used
per
byte
has
enabled
the
collateral,
now
faster

exponential
increase
in
global
data
traffic.

Computing Energy Efficiency & Total Global Digital Traffic Data Source: IEEE Transactions, Into the Exacloud, Entropy Economics The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
42 Efficiency
improvements
stimulate demand, a well-­‐recognized
economic
principle
and
a familiar

pattern
in
history.

Illumination
has followed
a
similar
trajectory
to data.

As
the
costs
of
illumination

(lumen-­‐hours)
collapsed
10,000
fold
from 1800,
illumination
use
rose
exponentially.

Growth
slowed

around
1980
contemporaneous
with
a
leveling
off
in
efficiency
gains.

Now
the
advent
of
super-­‐efficient

semiconductor
lighting
portends historic
trends
will
return
and
lumen
use
will
rise
– but
some

forecasters
believe
lumen
use
will
break
with
the
long-­‐run
trend
and
now
decline
with
rising
efficiency,

even
as
billions
more
people in
the
world
acquire
lighting.
113

Illumination Efficiency v. Total Use of Lighting
Data Source: Heat, Power and Light, Fouquet 2008: lumen consumption for the U.K.

The
history
of
efficiency
in global
aviation
tracks
the
same
trajectory
as
in computing
and
illumination.

More
efficiency
propels
demand.

This
basic
economic
rule
breaks
down
only
in
fully
saturated

markets,
such
as
with
U.S.
automobiles
where
there
are
more
registered cars
than
registered
drivers.

Saturation in
demand
for
both
air
travel and
data
in
particular are
far
from
visible.

Aviation Energy Efficiency v. Total Global Airline Traffic Data Source: FAA
GE’s new turbine will be 25% more efficient with10% more thrust; lower operating costs will help propel, not slow, trends to more traffic.114 The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
43 Some analysts
believe that
efficiency
gains
can now
outpace
data
traffic
growth,
even
though
that has

not
happened
in
the
past.115

Meanwhile, the
historic
rate
of
improvement
in
computing
energy
efficiency
– driven
largely
by

Moore’s
Law
– started
slowing
down
around 2005,
even
as
the
growth
in
global
traffic
on
the
Internet

began accelerating.
116

This
combination
arithmetically
guarantees
greater energy
use with growth
in

data
traffic.
 “…
your
wireless,
your
optical
networks,
your
wire line
[networks],
your
fixed
access
[technology],
your

core
backbone
networks
and
so
forth
…
[are
seeing]
a
sudden
slowdown
in
the
energy
efficiency.”

Thierry
Klein,
Alcatel-­‐Lucent
Bell
Labs.
 “[There
has
been]
a
sharp
reduction
in
the
rate
of
[computation]
energy
efficiency
improvements
over

the
last
several
years
resulting
in
the
formation
of
an
asymptotic
‘wall’.” IEEE
Transactions on
Scaling

Very
Large
Integration
Systems.
 “We
have
achieved
the
ultimate
spectral
[physics]
efficiency.
“Marcus
Weldon,
CTO
Alcatel-­‐Lucent.
 “…energy
consumption
in
ICT
networks
is
increasing
...
[there
is]
a
gap
between
rapid
network
growth

rates
today
and
historical
equipment
efficiency
improvements
-­‐-­‐ a
gap
that
promises
to
increase
over
the

decades
ahead. …
even considering
best-­‐case
projected
energy
efficiency
improvements,
[they]
are
not

expected
to
be
sufficient
to
check
the
rate
of
energy
consumption
over
the
long
term.”
GreenTouch.

Network
operators
are
hoping to
radically
improve
the
energy efficiency
of
their
equipment and

networks,
seeking gains greater
than
have
occurred
to
date.

 “The
consumption
of
the
network
starts
to
approach
total
global
electricity
supply
in
2025.

Clearly

something
needs
to
be
done
about
this.”

Rod
Tucker,
Director
of
CEET,
April
2012
Clearly
neither
the
above,
nor
the
earlier
noted
National
Academy
of
Sciences
observation
about
the

energy
cost
of
computing
becoming
“too
expensive,” will
come
to
pass.

Solutions
will
emerge
in

semiconductors,
software
and
operating
architectures.

Global
ICT
efficiency
will
improve,
but
so
will

global
ICT
energy
consumption
– just
as
both
have
in
the
past.

Forecasts of Global Internet Power Demand
Source: GreenTouch, CEET
The
Cloud
Begins
With
Coal
©

DIGITAL
POWER
GROUP
44 REFERENCES
& NOTES

1 New
refrigerator
350
kWh
per
EPA
Energy
Star;
~700
kWh/yr
weekly
streaming
HD
from
[network
operations]
+
[network
embodied
energy] +

[tablet
embodied
energy];
note,
ignores
data
centers
&
end-­‐use
tablet
charging:
~
300
kWh/yr
wireless
network
operations
from
HD
video

2.8 GB/hr
per
Netflix, network
energy
~2 kWh/GB.

Note
energy
use
varies w location
(type/age
equipment),
system
utilization
(see
Auer
et
al,
“How

Much
Energy
is
Needed
to
Run
a
Wireless
Network?”
June
2012).

Network
energy
ranges
from
19 kWh/GB
The
Mobile
Economy,
2013,
ATKearney,

to
~2 kWh/GB
per
CEET,
The
Power
of
Wireless
Cloud,
April
2013.

Annualized
embodied/manufacturing
energy
to
produce
tablet
(details
in
this

report)
~100
kWh/yr
per
tablet,
and
cell
network
operating
energy
equals
annualized
embodied
energy
of
network
equipment
used
for
5 years.

Refrigerator
embodied
energy
adds
5 -­‐ 10%
to
lifecycle
energy
use
of
refrigerator. 2 Cisco,
The
Zettabyte
Era—Trends
and
Analysis,
May
2013 3 IEA,
Tracking
Clean
Energy
Progress 2013 4 Barclays
Equity
Research,
oil
&
gas
industry
infrastructure
forecast
$5
trillion.
5 DOE/EIA,
International
Energy
Outlook; International
Energy
Agency,
Golden
Rules; BP,
Energy
Outlook 2030;
and
Exxon,
The
Outlook
for
Energy
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which
we