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