Bobbie Johnson over at Guardian Tech has been posting some interesting reports on the internet’s hunger for power (currently growing at roughly 10% annually), which have prompted Google to re-emphasise their commendable Carbon-neutral status on their blog, but also served to remind us that Google is an exception rather than the rule when it comes to internet companies and carbon footprints.
All this got me thinking about the potential for government regulation for the sector as a whole; seemingly unlikely on the face of it (it is not high in the public perception of environmental threats), but nonetheless perhaps essential considering the upward patterns of our web use and consequent power consumption.
Unfortunately however there is one massive problem with this concept, and it is the question of who should pay for the carbon-offsetting or whatever other means is used to reduce the sector’s environmental impact. After all, unlike many other companies, the IT sector doesn’t have much control over how many users certain sites and services attract. It is nigh on impossible to judge in the early days of a start-up if it will become the next Twitter or Facebook (i.e. massive Carbon footprint from data centres etc), or simply another low-level player (relatively negligible impact – at least individually).
With pressure currently being exerted across many industry sectors to make products more environmentally friendly (from motoring and aviation to supermarkets and food imports) it seems logical that the government consider also those whose carbon-footprint might be less obvious to the non-discerning eye. Many web users are not even aware of the energy they use each time they enter a Google search for example – as a concept it has not quite entered mainstream understanding on a significant scale, but this does not mean it should not be an environmental policy priority.
The problem however is that in order for such policies to be effective they must be constructed and imposed worldwide if they are to be effective – and this is why the issue is not so simple as a quick session in parliament to table a bill. Nonetheless one hopes that some tighter regulation will be at least publically discussed by world leaders to commit web firms to factor carbon offsetting into their business plans. Maybe something like a 2 year grace period could be allowed for new startups in order to accommodate the potentially unpredictable effects of rapid success (or the lack of it) after which the company must be Carbon neutral (including retroactive offsetting)?
It is a tricky problem and one that is only now slowly featuring in everyday blogging and occasionaly mainstream press. This very blog post is a perfect example of the complexity of the issue – who should pay for its environmental impact? Myself as an employee of etonDIGITAL? Or etonDIGITAL itself? What about Wordpress the CMS which enables the post? … I’m beginning to see why the issue is often considered too complex for quick and clear news stories…
Dejan Levi