HEATING UP?: The energy consumed to run the global telecom network produces 250 million tons of CO2 emissions annually, according to the newly formed Green Touch consortium.
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The unbridled success of wireless networks for Internet access and beyond has brought mobile telecommunications to remote areas of Africa, safety to many a driver stranded roadside, and worldwide mobility to professionals who were once deskbound. Yet all of this has come at a steep environmental cost: The global network and technology required to run it produce 250 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, roughly the same as is produced yearly by 50 million automobiles (20 percent of all the autos in the U.S.), according to Green Touch, a new international consortium of businesses, government agencies and academics formed to address this problem.
The consortium's response, announced Monday during a press conference in London, is for its members to develop the technology needed to make global telecommunications networks run 1,000 times more energy efficiently. A 1,000-fold reduction in energy use is roughly equivalent to being able to power the world's communications networks, including the Internet, for three years using the same amount of energy that it currently takes to run them for a single day, according to Gee Rittenhouse, vice president of research at Bell Labs, the Murray Hill, N.J.–based research and development arm of Alcatel–Lucent.
It would take a forest the size of the U.K. to absorb 250 million tons of CO2, Rittenhouse said, adding, "That's a lot of carbon dioxide. And you know what? It's growing."
The initial priorities of Green Touch—which includes Bell Labs, Stanford University's Wireless Systems Lab (WSL), Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., and 12 other members—are to develop a road map to meet its five-year goal of demonstrating new energy-efficient networking technologies and to create a reference architecture for all members to follow to assure that these new technologies work together. "The technologies needed to cut emissions have yet to be invented," Rittenhouse said. "With today's technology, at the very best, we can hold (CO2 emissions) constant."
Driven by increasing Internet traffic, telecom networks have scaled rapidly over the past decade to accommodate growth without creating new ways to address energy efficiency, Rittenhouse said. This growth has called for more computers to run the software that new handsets and Web sites require. Now, the challenge is to improve energy efficiency while also providing a consistent level of services as telecoms continue to expand.
Much of networks' inefficiencies today come from wireless, because its signals are not broadcast toward anyone in particular (unlike traditional wired broadband signals). Last year, Bell Labs researchers turned their attention to this problem and set out to calculate the minimum amount of energy required to power today's global networks.
The researchers found that networks could consume 10,000 times less energy than they use today and still function properly. "Of course this is a theoretical result," Rittenhouse said, "but a factor of 10,000 is remarkable." He added it would be "impractical" to try to reduce energy use by a factor of 10,000, but noted that the researchers determined that the technology needed to reduce energy use by a factor of 1,000 could be developed within the next five years if the networking industry (including carriers, equipment-makers and software writers) could find the right approach.
"We need from time to time to take a totally different approach rather than making incremental change," said Bell Labs President Jeong Kim, adding, "This is a wake-up call."
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15 Comments
Add CommentIt sounds like there's an interesting story here, but practically speaking, I have no idea after reading it how a 1/1000 reduction is going to be achieved. By making all antennas directional?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd then there's this: "A 1,000-fold reduction in energy use is roughly equivalent to being able to power the world's communications networks...for three years using the same amount of energy that it currently takes to run them for a single day, according to Gee Rittenhouse" ... who must be a world expert on multiplication, since he knows that 365 x 3 is near 1000. Next time, don't make it sound like you're citing someone for basic math.
Rather than waiting to slash energy usage why not increase clean energy output 1,000 fold?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUmm.. There is a Distinct problem with this math... Lets for example examine one method for reducing power comsumtion on a computer... Make the Processor use less power 64w vs 95w, make the memory smaller to also use less power....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, as we all know, these s0lutions have already been done... But did they curb power usage? Hell no, ANY THING that results in less power consumption usually results in MORE usage... which is why the typical power supply that comes with a Quad-Core Computer is now 600w's, up from the 300w that used to come with a standard PC 5 years ago.. (Hell if you try and build a system using a 300w PS, it will burn up from too much use in a matter of days)
Yeah, a 1,000 fold reduction will make it 1000x more powerful.... and most likely will increase CO2 emissions needed to keep up with everyone...
And this is just a typical example of electronics.... servers and the such require massive cooling, and DataCenters... OMG, I am an electrician and you should see what it takes to build one of these... 500,000ft of space, MILLIONS of feet of Pipe and Wire... and Power Usage that would supply 1 Million Homes...
Now Multiply that times 1000, and add in a doubling of the population and you see their suggestion just will not work...
James
candide missed the critical point that there is no such thing as clean energy production. therefore reducing energy consumtion is the only appropriate (environmentally friendly) means which i know of.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are several venues for reducing energy consumption. Communications equipment for thsurface communications have become more energy efficient. Directional broadcasting and reception do exist, and when combined with gps information it may be achievable and could improve security simultaneously.
I've also read that dogs have a larger carbon footprint than all the cars in the U.S. Maybe we should kill all the dogs and use drums to communicate. There is a price to pay for everything, let's face it, life's a compromise with only one winner in the end.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrying to always use less energy is the wrong way, harnessing electricity is one of mankind's greatest achievements, fossil fuels are not. Canidide is right. Solar of course has some effects, but it is 100* less than fossil fuels, and there is more than 1000* as much as we need. This is a far more positive solution that will actually work, as James points out, efficiency can NEVER get us off fossil fuels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWill this really matter for telecom companies? I'm a financial analyst who has worked for some wireless telecoms. The electricity cost is a minor part of their cost structure. For a wireless tower utilities are about �100 ($145) per month, which works out to very little on a per-subscriber basis. While any company is happy to improve their bottom line, if the cost of the new equipment exceeds the cost saving companies won't switch.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissounds like a lot of wishing and hoping, both in the article and in the comments
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbrynn217 - I am in the data center business and I can tell you that there are many many advances being made to lower power usage and increase power usage effectiveness. Yes data centers consume a lot of power. The one we are currently staging will use 40MW when completed but for the environment there is an enormous difference between one that consumes 40MW of Hydroelectric generated electricity and one that consumes 40MW of coal fired power, over 50 times the difference. In BC where I am located the power grid operates at 14gCO2eq/Kwh , now compare that to West Virginia where it is 1055gCO2eq/Kwh. The difference is significant and staggering. Ad to that new technologies such as hot aisle/cold aisle separation, server virtualization, free atmospheric cooling for a large part of the year (~300 days here in Kelowna) and many more techniques and you get super efficient use of the power that is consumed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy add'em-up machine uses full spectrum solar panels to power it. Can't telecommunications us those same solar panels to help charge a new nanobattery, that is made out of paper, in cell phones and computers? That may cut energy consumption even more than they speculated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUm, I think the most you can generally reduce something is "one-fold."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBuild igloos for data-centers. In the Arctic. No A/C required.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBan the internet. Confiscate all electrical appliances and tear up the roads. Making cars useless--except to live in.
That oughta save some KW/h, eh?
All forms of energy, "clean" or not, end up being heat and increase of entropy. And it takes a certain amount of energy to achieve an effect. What we can do, however, is to reduce the wasted energy that is not used for the effect but is released as heat. That is the only way slow down the consequence of energy use.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll forms of energy, "clean" or not, end up being heat and increase of entropy. And it takes a certain amount of energy to achieve an effect. What we can do, however, is to reduce the wasted energy that is not used for the effect but is released as heat. That is the only way slow down the consequence of energy use.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@candide: "Rather than waiting to slash energy usage why not increase clean energy output 1,000 fold?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBesides the fact that (current 'clean' energy output) x 1,000 is in no way related to the current power requirements for the telecommunications industry, why do you hate the earth so much?
'Clean' energy requires a massive amount of infrastructure investment and is consequent environmental load.
What do you think? Wind turbines and solar panels are lying around waiting to be put on poles or aimed at the sun?