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I was recently reminded how easily the public can be whipped into a frenzy of ignorance when I happened to revisit the Guardian article from 8 years ago that claimed data centers would use 20% of global electricity by 2025.'

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/11/tsunami-...



The article is about all internet-connected devices:

"Global computing power demand from internet-connected devices, high resolution video streaming, emails, surveillance cameras and a new generation of smart TVs is increasing 20% a year, consuming roughly 3-5% of the world’s electricity in 2015, says Swedish researcher Anders Andrae."

It's not crazy to think it might increase to 20%. How much is it really in 2025?


The normally cited estimate of 2-4% already includes all networks, wired and wireless, and all client devices, mobile phones, and whatnot.


> normally cited estimate of 2-4%

I haven't seen that. Interestingly it's less than 2015, per the article.


The IEA periodically publishes these estimates. Some years they discuss client devices and/or networks. What's always been interesting to me in those reports is that mobile networks use about the same amount of power globally as data centers.




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