Energy- oriented Internet (The problem)

One of the problems is that human’s activities have severe impacts on the environment. These activities will be measured in three dimensions: energy-consumption, GHC emissions and cost.

 About energy-consumption, ICT (Information and communications technology) consumes 7% worldwide produced electrical energy and 2-3% world’s GHG (Green House Gasses) that is a lot of energy and his consumption will grow up. In terms of energy consumption, The Internet consumes around 240 GW that is the equivalent of 12,6% of the worldwide produced electrical power. It means that for cover these necessities will be necessary around 240 nuclear power plants to power the Internet. This numbers of Internet consumption are caused by the growth of the total Internet traffic and the number of users connected.

The problem of ICT is the vicious cycle: the useful work heats the devices that need to be cooled. So it consumes two times: powering and maintaining (UPS+cooling) the devices. ICT does indirect GHG emissions during the use phase, but network infrastructure consumes 22 GW (1,16 % worldwide produced electrical power).

To find a solution of this problem, will be taken into account Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and direct and indirect impact to assure that the “solution” does not fall into the rebound effect (increased energy efficiency-> overall reduced costs->increased demand->energy consumption increases->GHG emissions overtake the offset gained  by energy efficiency).

Two possible solutions are Carbon Neutrality and Zero Carbon (removable energy).  The first has different approaches how set a limit and buy credits from virtuous actor (set&trade), pay for damage to compensate emissions (carbon offset), pay as you go (carbon taxes) and incentives. Zero carbon has advantages and drawbacks. The advantages are that this energy is virtually unlimited, it’s free energy (zero costs in the use phase) are beneficial over their entire Life-Cycle. The drawbacks are his low efficiency and that it’s not always available or applicable.

One of the things we can do for contribute to this situation is what is called the energy-oriented paradigm to the internet.  It consists in three blocks with the finality of reduce the energy consumption: Energy-Efficiency (equipment energy consumption, architectures), Energy-Awareness (Intelligent technology, alghorithms&protocols) and Energy-Oriented Infrastructures (Smart Grid and LCA are essential). 

We can apply this paradigm in three levels: application (power state of the computers and the currently set power policy), system/middleware (load balancing, scheduling & task distribution and shut down idle nodes) and Networking (minimize time to transfer data & reduce data to be transmitted, shut down idle interfaces, etc...).