If the Network of networks were a country, it would, perhaps, be the most populated and, also, one of those that would emit the most emissions into the atmosphere. These are given by the number of active servers, the energy needed for each one to function and the percentage of use of energy sources that emit polluting gases.
Sustainability and awareness for a more ecological world has reached the internet. “The code thing has been, by far, the biggest thing I could do,” says Danny Van Kooten, programmer, in an interview with Wired.
This Dutch computer scientist, aware of caring for the environment, decided to reduce carbon emissions by stopping eating meat, among many other actions. However, The one that has generated the most impact is related to the Internet.
Van Kooten simplified the HTML code of his WordPress plugin to avoid increased traffic, which, in turn, allows for less energy to be consumed on the servers. This is how Kooten’s idea of a more sustainable internet begins.
According to their estimate, cutting the code reduced global CO2 production by approximately 59,000 kilograms. the equivalent of flying from New York to Amsterdam, round trip about 85 times.
This programmer is one of the creators of a plugin that helps send mass emails through the Mailchimp platform, a tool widely used in the world of marketing.
In a study of the plugin’s operation, Kooten discovered excessive energy consumption on the servers, since this tool had to send to the browser not only the information of the page itself, but also that of the code.
So the Dutch programmer “slimmed” the code to make it “more efficient, so it now sends 20 KB less data,” he points out.
Consumption skyrocketed
According to the European Commission itself, Internet energy consumption is skyrocketing. “A need that also affects climate change,” warns the European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager.
According to an Eon study, platforms such as Netflix, Amazon, Google and YouTube consume around 345 billion kilowatts per hour of electricity worldwide. Furthermore, this study warns that the four technological giants accounted for more than half of internet consumption worldwide.