Greening your digital life
Back in eighth grade, Nathaniel Mills grabbed some tools and sat down in his bedroom. A computer lay open in front of him, filled with components he had installed himself. It was time to add another part. “Building a computer is essentially LEGO for adults,” he says.
This was back in 2014. At the time, he had wanted a powerful computer he could use to play video games like Skyrim. So he was upgrading his old one.
Unlike most gamers, though, he wasn’t just thinking about fast gameplay and movie-quality images and sound. He was also thinking about energy. He wondered, could he build a great gaming computer that also used less electricity than usual?
The answer was yes. At the time, a typical gaming computer used about the same amount of energy as three refrigerators. By the time Nathaniel was done, his used little more than a third that much. But it was still fast and fun to play on.
Even if you’re not a gamer, you likely spend hours every day texting, watching videos, Zooming and more. It takes electricity to charge the batteries in your devices. But that’s not the only energy involved. The networks that carry signals to and from your devices consume electricity. So do the distant data centers that house and process most of the content and apps you use. And it takes electricity to manufacture the devices themselves.
In most countries, electricity mainly comes from power plants that burn fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas. That combustion spews harmful emissions that worsen climate change. So the more devices you own and the more you use them and connect to the internet or the cloud, the more emissions will be produced and the bigger your impact on the climate will be.
But how much impact does an evening of Fortnite or TikTok actually have? It’s complicated. Some digital activities or ways of connecting use more energy than others. Like Nathaniel, you can make choices that reduce the amount of energy you use — while still having fun. Let’s find out how.
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