How much computing can mankind afford? That is a question the computer and telecoms industries hate to hear. They do not see themselves in the same dirty league as airlines or carmakers, sources of huge amounts of carbon dioxide, but instead as part of the solution. In a pre-emptive strike, a group of technology firms calling itself the Global eSustainabil-ity Initiative (GESI) has joined the Climate Group, a non-profit environmental club, to examine how information and communications technologies (ICT) affect climate change. Their research, released on June 20th, confirms that ict could in fact do much to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions-but not in the way you might think. When it comes to emissions, ict is on a par with aviation. In 2007, according to the report, the world's electronic gear (including pcs, their peripherals, telecoms networks and devices, and the warehouses of corporate machines known as data centres) produced 830m tonnes of CO_2-about 2% of total emissions from human activity. Even with technology that uses energy more sparingly, this is expected to grow to 1.4 billion tonnes by 2020. Although pcs, mobile phones and networks will account for most (56%) of this, emissions from data centres will grow the fastest.
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