Of course Mike, you're right -
"But I think the difference between burning gasoline/diesel/jet fuel to transport people is so much greater than transporting electrons to do the same job. It almost makes it insignificant to worry about different ways to save energy on the IT side.
I had sort of trivialized the question: in depth, you would have to analyze the energy cost of constructing the airports, maintaining them (and that includes radar and ground control), staffing them, and heating/cooling them, the costs of constructing the jets, maintaining them, the cost...blah blah blah: taxis, buses, highways leading to the airports, the transportation of staff to and from work - as opposed to 100 people simply logging on and getting down to business.
There is, as you point out, simply no comparison.
My only point about saving energy on the IT side is that I can remember, even in the 70's people talking about the energy savings that would be achieved if people shut off their computers, as opposed to leaving them on: and that was long before the 'net. Overall, I was just trying to say that there were some immediate, relatively painless steps that could be taken to decrease the amount of energy usage. I'm just guessing, but I suspect that the value of the steps I've mentioned could be around 100 watts per computer user - in aggregate, the decrease of usage on the grid would be noticeable.
Regards,
Jim |
