Ever since the Computers, our lives have changed like never before. How we love getting hooked on the internet for hours, chatting, mailing, reading online, shopping or even researching for the write ups.
We never thought how this dependence on computers could actually contribute to our energy saving spirit.
But the new study commissioned by the CEA (Consumer Electronice Association) and conducted by TIAX LLC of Cambridge, Massachusetts thinks just that.
The newly released study shows how simple things like working form home and e-Commerce can actually save the amount of energy that about 1 million US households would require in an year about 9-14 billion kilowatt hours of energy. It is the same amount of energy saved as about 1 million solar powered houses would.
The Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Impact of Telecommuting and e-Commerce, this study has changed our perceptions about internet as an energy saving unit like never before.
For example, when a consumer purchases a book from a website rather than a going to a shop to buy it, he spends only one-sixteenth of the energy. What’s more, it takes less energy to ship the book to the online consumer than if he or she drove to the mall, thereby reducing CO2 emissions, considerably.
By using the internet, approximately 2 million vehicles every year in the US do not hit the road thereby saving about 840 million gallons of gas. This has further resulted in reducing CO2 emissions by nearly 14 million tons.
People, who work from home or shop online at least once in a week end up saving 1.4 gallons of gas and help cutting CO2 by 17 to 23 kilograms per day. Although using the net is not possible without energy, through telecommuting, over all energy saved is equivalent to 12 hrs of an average US households’ energy consumption.
This means annually, we would end up saving 320 gallons of gas, cut down CO2 emissions by 4.5-6 tons per year and in electrical terms this would mean saving 4000- 6000 kilowatt hours per year.
Telecommuting has been made possible by the boom in Internet-based boom in home offices. The numbers are rising, both in energy being saved and internet based work becoming common. Home offices use far less energy than office buildings, and telecommuting reduces automobile travel.
The Internet not only cuts down on energy use, as well as use of paper in offices and institutions. The paperless economy might seem a distant dream but there is a noticeable reduction in usage of paper because of internet.
Via: ENN
