As we celebrate Earth Day 2024, the world seems to be on fire. Quite literally with some regions battling extreme wildfires, while other regions are drowning under massive flooding. Sea levels are rising, temperatures are climbing, and ice is melting. Amid all of this, it’s worth pausing and thinking about the Internet’s relationship with climate change.

The reality is…it’s complicated.

On the one hand, the Internet is a tremendous force for good in helping reduce the greenhouse gases we may individually create and in connecting all the people working on climate solutions around the world. On the other hand, by its very nature, the Internet requires electricity to operate, and the devices we all use require the extraction of minerals and create vast amounts of e-waste. And, in the face of climate change, the Internet’s infrastructure needs our help to be able to continue to operate.

It’s complicated.

How the Internet is Helping Address Climate Change

If we just think back a couple of years to the height of the COVID pandemic lockdowns, we saw exactly how the Internet was a lifeline for us all. Working remotely from our own homes or other locations, we were able to connect, communicate, collaborate, and create. All without traveling and generating any of the climate impact associated with travel. A fascinating thing happened in that some cities had clean air for the first time in years. Less fossil fuels were consumed. People learned how the Internet could be used to reduce our commuting and air travel. While many have returned to commuting to offices and traveling (and the air pollution has returned, too), some people have continued working remotely, at least part of the time. We’ve seen how the Internet can help us reduce our own impact on the climate in this way.

The Internet also plays an enormous role in the sharing of scientific data and information about potential solutions to climate challenges. Scientists are collaborating using the Internet to engage in large-scale studies. They’re making their information available to many other researchers. Regular people are getting involved in “citizen science” efforts that are collecting data, such as this example in Serbia. Vast sensor networks are being deployed that collect climate data via Internet connections. One example is what our Kyrgyzstan Chapter is doing with remote environmental info.

In fact, if you look at the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Internet connectivity is critical to so many of them. If we are to have any hope of achieving the SDGs, the Internet is necessary to the communication and collaboration.

We’ve also seen how the Internet plays a vital role in helping the people responding to disasters, some of which are related to climate change. Organizations such as the International Red Cross, NetHOPE, and the ITDRC all rely on Internet-based communication to help those who are in need.

In all these many ways, the Internet is a force for good helping people respond to our changing climate.
How the Internet is Affecting the Climate

And yet…by its very nature, the Internet needs electricity. The 1s and 0s that make up the fabric of the Internet are signals relayed over electrical wires, optical cables, or radio spectrum. The creation of those 1s and 0s requires power. No power, no Internet.

How is that power produced? Is it through renewable sources? Or fossil fuels? While remote working may help you reduce your personal impact through commuting, is it just changing the point of pollution to the massive power plants that need to generate more electricity to power our systems and devices?

The reality is that the Internet’s infrastructure needs power in so many places: the transmission lines, the network routers, the Internet exchange points—even the subsea cables need power for repeaters and landing stations.

And how much power is needed?

The Internet’s network infrastructure has a certain level of need, but even more is needed for the data centers for all the applications, systems, and services. Much has been written about the massive power consumption of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and our new favorite AI tools are also massive consumers of power. One estimate is that training a large language model such as ChatGPT-3 consumes as much energy as the yearly consumption of 130 US homes. The demand is straining the power grid in some regions.

But beyond those specific technologies, all our social networks, web hosting, and cloud computing systems need data centers. Large companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are constantly building more and more data centers to accommodate their rapid growth. Those data centers need power. They need physical space. A recent MIT study indicated that “the cloud” now has a larger carbon footprint than the airline industry, and that “a single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50,000 homes.” The study also cites the enormous cooling costs, the huge volumes of water required, and the noise pollution affecting local communities.
An aerial view of a lithium mining operation