The next time you look to your smartphone to recall the name of that actress who co-starred in that movie with the guy from that television series, consider a study which estimated that a typical internet search engine uses as much energy as illuminating a 60-W lightbulb for 17 seconds while emitting 0.2 grams of CO2. While that might not seem like a lot, consider next how many web searches you conduct in a day, a week, a year. Now multiply that by the 4.33 billion people across our planet that Statista reports were active internet users as of the summer of this year.
On a mass scale, the energy footprint of the IT sector is estimated to comprise 7% of global electricity consumption, according to Greenpeace Intl. The data center industry, one small segment of the IT business, represents a large portion of its power consumption, drawing approximately 3% of all power generated globally and accounting for roughly 2% of greenhouse gas emissions.