International Energy Agency

Post image for Cloud Computing: Friend or Foe of Kyotoism?

As I sit here typing away, Amazon.Com’s Cloud Player serves up 320 tunes I’ve purchased over the past year and a half. I can play them anywhere, any time, on any computer with Internet access. I don’t have to lug around my laptop or even a flash drive. What’s not to like?

Our greener friends worry about all the power consumed by the data centers that deliver computer services over the Internet. Think of all the emissions!

A year-long New York Times investigation summarized in Saturday’s (Sep. 22) edition (“Pollution, Power, and the Internet“) spotlights the explosive growth of the data storage facilities supporting our PCs, cell phones, and iPods — and the associated surge in energy demand. According to The Times:

  • In early 2006, Facebook had 10 million or so users and one main server site. “Today, the information generated by nearly one billion people requires outsize versions of these facilities, called data centers, with rows and rows of servers spread over hundreds of thousands of square feet, and all with industrial cooling systems.”
  • “They [Facebook’s servers] are a mere fraction of the tens of thousands of data centers that now exist to support the overall explosion of digital information. Stupendous amounts of data are set in motion each day as, with an innocuous click or tap, people download movies on iTunes, check credit card balances through Visa’s Web site, send Yahoo e-mail with files attached, buy products on Amazon, post on Twitter or read newspapers online.”
  • “To support all that digital activity, there are now more than three million data centers of widely varying sizes worldwide, according to figures from the International Data Corporation.”
  • “Worldwide, the digital warehouses use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants, according to estimates industry experts compiled for The Times. Data centers in the United States account for one-quarter to one-third of that load, the estimates show.”
  • “Jeremy Burton, an expert in data storage, said that when he worked at a computer technology company 10 years ago, the most data-intensive customer he dealt with had about 50,000 gigabytes in its entire database. (Data storage is measured in bytes. The letter N, for example, takes 1 byte to store. A gigabyte is a billion bytes of information.)”
  • “Today, roughly a million gigabytes are processed and stored in a data center during the creation of a single 3-D animated movie, said Mr. Burton, now at EMC, a company focused on the management and storage of data.”
  • “Just one of the company’s clients, the New York Stock Exchange, produces up to 2,000 gigabytes of data per day that must be stored for years, he added.”

The impact of the Internet — or, more broadly, the proliferation of digital technology and networks — on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions has been a contentious topic since 1999, when technology analyst Mark P. Mills published a study provocatively titled “The Internet Begins with Coal” and co-authored with Peter Huber a Forbes column titled “Dig more coal: The PCs are coming.” [click to continue…]

Post image for IEA: Production Plans for Electric Vehicles Below Government Targets

Major automakers’ production plans for electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (EVs and PHEVs) “are far below sales targets set by countries,” announced the International Energy Agency (IEA) in a press release accompanying the agency’s newly updated Electric Vehicle Roadmap report.

Major manufacturer production plans add up to 0.9 million units by 2015 and 1.4 million annually by 2020. In contrast, governments have set sales targets of 1.5 million units by 2015 and 7 million annually by 2020.

Evidently, policymakers have mis-underestimated (as a former President might say) market demand for EVs and PHEVs. The gap between production plans and political targets would be larger still without political props for those vehicles such as a federal tax credit up to $7,500 and billions in federal R&D support.

IEA believes more incentives and R&D — including coordinated federal, state, and local support for re-charging infrastructure — will do the trick. Now there’s a big surprise!

Post image for A Record To Celebrate!

Someone alert the Guinness Book of World Records! In 2010, humans set a new all-time high for global greenhouse gas emissions, according to an International Energy Agency analysis released yesterday.

If you are an alarmist, then this is one of your many causes for concern. If, however, you are a global warming “denier” like me, then this is a cause for celebration, because more emissions translate into more wealth creation!

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Post image for IEA to Obama: Please Drill, Baby, Drill

The Wall Street Journal today reported on a statement by the International Energy Agency’s governing board, calling on oil producing countries to increase their output to “help avoid the negative global economic consequences which a further sharp market tightening [i.e., higher oil prices] could cause.”

Here’s the full IEA statement:

The IEA Governing Board, at its regular quarterly meeting on 18-19 May, examined oil market developments and their impact on the global economy. Despite a near-10% correction since 5 May, oil prices remain at elevated levels driven by market fundamentals, geopolitical uncertainty and future expectations. The IEA Governing Board expressed serious concern that there are growing signs that the rise in oil prices since September is affecting the economic recovery by widening global imbalances, reducing household and business income, and placing upward pressure on inflation and interest rates. As global demand for oil increases seasonally from May to August, there is a clear, urgent need for additional supplies on a more competitive basis to be made available to refiners to prevent a further tightening of the market.
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