Internet responsible for 2 per cent of global energy usage

“Raghavan and Ma suggest that attempts to create more energy-efficient internet devices, while worth pursuing, will not do much to lower global energy consumption. Instead, they propose that we should think about how the internet can replace more energy-intensive activities. Their calculations show that a meeting that takes place by video-conference uses an average of one hundredth as much energy as one in which participants took a flight so that they could sit down together. Replacing just one in four of those meetings by a video call, they add, would save as much power as the entire internet consumes.” (Jim Giles, NewScientist)