How Green is your Web Part II

So, Nick Carr's article about energy guzzling Second Life Avatars has made it to the Economist's latest issue. (In essence, Nick's numbers indicate that the average 2nd Life Avatar consumes about as much energy as the average Brazilian). Now it may just be me, but in an energy constrained future, the choice of keeping a First Life Brazilian beauty/hunk (check as appropriate) from Copacabana alive vs a Second Live Avatar is a no brainer.

(Whaaaat - you'd keep the Brazilian ?????

Computers, from a thermodynamic point of view, are near perfect Power Wastage Devices - what you put into them is very efficiently converted into heat, and you then have to spend even more energy taking the heat that they make out of them (because the Second law of Thermodynamics says so, thats why). Thus every $ you spend powering a computer in a datacentre needs roughly another $ spent extracting heat. Datacentre power required per sq ft has more than doubled since 2000 when I was in Web hosting, mainly due to server motherboards and disks being packed far more closely together in racks, blades etc etc rather than in their own cages - and ever more powerful Power Wastage Devices (aka CPUs) being used

The Economist also shows how there is a movement towards Green Web Energy, with Norway
arguing that it is a Greener Web Hoster as it gets most of its electricity from renewable resources. And major PC makers are going green by making less Power Easting chips.

Now, there is a huge amount of humbug in the modern Save The Planet movement (don't get me wrong, I've been Green for 25 years, when it was the pursuit of nuts, fruitcakes and the occasional rational being) imho, a lot of the stuff going down now is corporate - and government - profiteering on public guilt. Maybe thats the subject of another post (or even a blog?), but being serious for a moment, there are a huge number of machines globally left on that are not running cycles and could be switched off. And there is probably a need to start thinking of optimal sites for datacentres.

However, while laudable, this does not go far enough, In order to get the 'Net industry to clean up its act we need a Content Emission Tax, similar to the Carbon Emission tax, based on energy per Byte. In this model, high volume content players like YouTube, Second Life etc would pay a tax on the energy cost of keeping their content going. Likewise, social networks with large amounts of content and links would pay this tax. In order to keep operating, they would trade it under the Content Emissions Trading Law with low content players - like Broadstuff, for example.

Forget Google Ads, the way to monetise the small website in future will be from Content Emissions Trading, on GoreBay of course!

Oh yes, and an energy tax on mobile phones that people talk loudly into in public places, and iPods going at full volume - though maybe that can be dealt with under anti smoking like laws - passive hearing will be seen as life threatening one of these days, our best people are working on it. In silent mode, of course....

You heard it all here first......