translated from Spanish: We also pollute with the internet without leaving home

World.- Sending an email, watching a movie by streaming, buying online or making a video call have become everyday actions in the pandemic. But each has an environmental impact not only in the form of CO2 emissions, but also in water and land expenditure. The biggest footprint lies in data transmission.
Ask yourself a few simple questions: how many emails did you send last year? How many movies or series did you see on Netflix, Filmin or HBO? Better yet, how many video calls did you make while teleworking or in your free time? You may not remember, but your answer reflects how much you polluted. Yes, without leaving the house.
“Last year I sent about 1,700 emails at an average value of 10 grams of carbon emitted each. This means that I have contaminated 17 kilos of carbon dioxide by sending emails”, tells SINC Juan Antonio Añel, co-director of the Chair of Energy and Sustainability of the University of Vigo. This accounts for almost 5% of what is polluted on a Madrid-Vienna flight, says Añel.
Knowing that the carbon budget that each person has a year is about two tons of CO2, “1% can leave you with the simple fact of sending emails”, warns the Spanish researcher
So what if we add to our ecological footprint the use of other internet applications? Its consumption represents an environmental impact thousands of kilometers from our homes, where the data centers are located, structures that store all the information online that is transmitted through the networks.
The energy maintenance of these systems implies a consumption of water, soil and carbon dioxide that has so far been underestimated. “These infrastructures require electricity to function, which contributes to climate change. A country that relies heavily on fossil fuels will have a higher carbon footprint,” Renée Obringer, a postdoctoral researcher at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) in the US, tells SINC.
One more polluting industry
Eight years ago the internet industry produced about 830 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, the equivalent of 2% of global CO2 emissions, the same proportion as the entire aviation industry, according to a study published in 2013. Projections estimated that this figure would double by 2020, and it has. Global emissions of carbon dioxide produced over the internet had already reached 3.7% of the total, before the onset of the covid-19 crisis in March 2020.
Although confinement was a record drop in global carbon emissions that year, teleworking and increased home entertainment have represented a significant environmental impact
Although confinement was a record drop in global carbon emissions that year, telework and increased home entertainment have continued to represent a significant environmental impact.
“The Internet is like any other industry. We’ve already seen what happened to others when they start growing at exorbitant levels and spend more resources, it’s impossible to make them sustainable,” Joana Moll, artist, researcher and creator of CO2GLE, a real-time network-based project that shows the amount of CO2 emitted every second thanks to global visits to Google.com.
But in addition to CO2 emissions, the way internet data is stored and transferred also generates water and ground expenditure for the electricity it needs. This is seen for the first time by a work published in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling.
“Thermoelectric power plants (e.g. coal or nuclear) require water to cool down, affecting the water footprint. Hydroelectric dams also have a high water footprint,” says Obringer, lead author of the work.
This study revealed that the average global land footprint for internet use was 3,400 km2 per year. “This is related to the amount of land needed to build and maintain data centers and transmission networks,” she adds to SINC the researcher.
Video calls and streaming in the spotlight
Teleworking, streaming, video calls, online shopping, gaming, internet searches and emailing generate a growing environmental impact through data traffic. By 2003, 5 billion gigabytes of digital content had been generated, an amount consumed every other day in 2015, a Greenpeace report said.
Internet usage is projected to continue to increase to 66% of the global population by 2023, of which more than 70% will have mobile connectivity. There will also be 3.6 devices per person that year connected internet. But which of our uses has the greatest footprint?
“It depends on personal habits,” Juan Antonio Añel tells SINC. Internet consumption when teleworking can have the same impact as in the office. In this case, “the carbon footprint is going to be as clean as the energy source that supplies the electricity consumed,” the researcher continues.
Today, however, “one of the largest carbon footprints corresponds to data transfer, such as watching movies streaming. This needs to download a lot of data that takes up a huge amount of transferred gigas,” explains the Spanish expert.
In 2020, traffic due to streaming occupied more than 80% of the total, according to a Cisco report. Every second, nearly a million minutes of video content had traveled the network that year. Thus, an HD TV with internet access that broadcasts two to three hours of content a day would generate on average both traffic and a day in an entire home.
In addition, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which have millions of users around the world, already allow you to stream videos in real time. Added to this are platforms such as YouTube, Netflix and HBO, whose consumption has continued to increase. In fact, these applications are some of the largest historical sources of traffic on the network.
Video calls are joined to streaming. According to a Eurostat report, 78% of Spaniards made last year through apps such as Zoom and Google Meet. Only one hour of video conferencing emits between 150 and 1,000 grams of carbon dioxide. By comparison, four litres of gasoline burned by a car emit about nine grams.
But in addition to carbon dioxide emissions, that video call hour requires between two and twelve litres of water, as well as an area of land that is equal to the size of an iPad Mini. “Global internet use could involve 2.6 trillion litres of water per year (considering the average value). This is due to the water used to produce the electricity that makes data centers and transmission networks run,” Obringer reports.
Is it possible to minimize our impact? According to the scientist, leaving the camera off during an online call could reduce these footprints by 96%. Streaming content in standard definition instead of high definition could also reduce the impact by 86%, the team estimates.
“Banking systems talk about the positive environmental impact of s quitting paper, but no one says the benefit of turning off the camera or reducing the quality of the transmission. Therefore, without your consent, these platforms are increasing your environmental footprint,” says Kaveh Madani, visiting researcher at the Yale MacMillan Center in the US and co-author of Obringer’s study.
Pollution
A new study estimates the approximate carbon, water, and soil footprints associated with every hour of data consumed in internet applications. / Purdue University/Kayla Wiles
A huge footprint that we don’t see, but it exists
This consumption seems invisible and intangible, and that’s a problem. “The Internet is actually the largest infrastructure we’ve ever built in human history. But we only relate it to our devices, we don’t see anything else. The cloud metaphor has done a lot of damage,” Moll says. “It takes a paradigm shift to make the industry more sustainable,” he continues.
The Internet is actually the largest infrastructure we’ve ever built in human history. The cloud metaphor has actually done a lot of damage
Since the beginning of the pandemic, several countries have reported a 20% increase in internet traffic. In Spain, six out of ten people consider the internet and mobile to be essential in their lives last year and 90% say they use the internet daily, according to a report recently published by the BBVA Foundation.
If the trend continues until the end of 2021, this increase in internet use alone would mean a forest of more than 115,000 km2, twice the surface of Castile and León, to hijack the carbon emitted. The additional water required in data processing and transmission would be sufficient to fill more than 300,000 Olympic pools, while the resulting dirt footprint would be equal to the size of the city of Los Angeles.
To reach these conclusions, Obringer’s team estimated, based on available data, the carbon, water and dirt footprints associated with each gigabyte of data used on YouTube, Zoom, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and twelve other platforms, as well as online gaming and web browsing. The more video used in an app, the higher the footprints.
By the end of 2021, the land footprint resulting from increased internet use would be approx.equal to the size of the city of Los Angeles
This impact varies by country. In the U.S., internet data processing and transmission has a 9% higher carbon footprint than the global average, but its water and ground footprints are 45% and 58% lower, respectively.
In the case of Germany, one of the world leaders in renewable energy, its carbon footprint is well below the global average, but its water and terrestrial footprint is much higher. The land footprint for energy production in this country is 204% above average, according to the researchers’ calculation.
Can our fingerprint be reduced?
Obringer’s work aims to be “a call to action for both consumers and policy makers and businesses. Our results show that the environmental footprint of the internet can be quite large, but it can be mitigated,” he says to SINC. Now, to what extent is responsibility individual? “As much as we do, it’s not going to do any good unless it’s done en masse. This is at the public policy level. It’s a systemic problem,” says Joana Moll.
Añel advises to resort to lower power equipment with a good internet connection. “I have a very basic but very efficient laptop. In my opinion there is abuse of very powerful equipment that consumes a lot,” he tells SINC.
For the Spanish researcher there is also an imbalance between what we consume, what we pay and what we pollute. Electricity bills are often regular in most households, while that consumption represented in emissions is “much more impressive.”
“For me the important thing is not so much what we can be doing at home, but what we stop doing. In the end, the biggest trace of personal carbon most avoidable is transport,” concludes Añel.
Source: SINC 

Original source in Spanish