How much electricity does one email consume?

Question

Granted, we aren't using paper anymore, and no little van needs to drive across the country to deliver our 50g of pen-written pages. But what I'm trying to get to the bottom of is whether sending things electronically is actually more environmentally friendly when you consider all aspects involved. After all, computing requires electric power, which in turn may require power plants of questionable pedigree (oil, coal, etc.) to be run, which pump out CO2 which comes from fossil fuels - whereas trees actually absorb CO2 when they grow, and paper only releases the CO2 that was needed to grow the trees back into the atmosphere when (and if) burned at some stage. So, long story short: Are emails really that environmentally friendly? And if so, by what margin, do you think, are they superior to paper-based messaging systems? Could it be that it depends on the number of emails you send per day? Or how quickly you fire them out, then shut down the workstation? Just wondering...

Answer 1

It depends on a number of things. Your computer itself takes in electricity, which usually comes from coal-fire or nuclear stations. Then there's the other equipments, such as the modem, monitor. Then we move outside of the house to the different networks and their workstations, relays, transmitters/recievers, and the other person's computer. To calculate the actual amount of electricty would be next to impossible, as it depends on where you are, how much current yoru computer is drawing, and other various electronic transmissions/equipments.

Answer 2

It is impossible to tell how much electricity one email uses up...

1. it consumes electricity on your computer as you compose it...
2. it consumes electricity on your ISP's computer as you send it...
3. from there it can go many different places depending upon how close to the backbone of the Internet your ISP places your account...

after all.. if it goes to 100 mainframe computers it uses different amounts of power than if it only goes to 50...

then, does each computer send it on to the next or delete it as not a path to follow for the destination IP...

and how long does your email sit around waiting for you to read it... or delete it? or how long does it sit on the other end waiting to be deleted?...

If you are trying to figure out which is more environmentally friendly.. computers or paper... then you really need to consider all of the power used on all computers and all of the manufacturing... against all of the paper production processes.

Answer 3

Let's say your computer runs 140 watts (reference 1), including the monitor, and that you keep it on 8 hours a day. That's 1,120 watt-hours, or about 1.1 kilowatt hours. Average residential electrical power cost is 10.6 cents per kwh (reference 2) in May of '06. That works out to 11.872 cents per day for your computer.

The cost of a first-class stamp is $0.39, or about three days' worth of power. Ergo, it costs as much to keep a low-ish end computer on for three days as it does to mail one letter by First Class mail.

Now- obviously, these aren't immediately equivalent; the USPS isn't going to say that that $0.39 stamp pays for X cents in fuel cost, and Y cents in labor. But look at it this way: virtually all the system is mechanized and electronic, from optically scanning your ZIP code to trucking it or flying it from point A to point B. Most of that cost is in fuel or electrical costs (and, therefore, ultimately leads to an increase in atmospheric CO2), or in labor costs.

But then what do labor costs pay for? They pay for an employee, who in turn uses that money to buy fuel for his car, electricity for his home, food for his family (which in turn is produced with electricity, fuel, and labor), and products for his home- all of which in turn are produced with electricity, fuel, and labor.

It all breaks down to having an entire country whose economic skids are greased with cheap energy- oil, coal, natural gas.

Even if I'm off by an order of 3 (i.e., you leave your computer on 24/7, or you have an energy-hog system that you leave on for 16 hours a day, or if your home is air-conditioned such that the a/c has to remove the waste heat the computer ultimately converts those kilowatt-hours into), that still equals one letter a day on an expense basis.

And for our purposes here, the expense basis is darned close to an energy equivalent basis. Ergo, your email may not kill any trees, but you might be giving some bushes the beating of their lives.

Or something like that.

Does that answer your question? Now I'm confused.

Answer 4

Maybe Yahoo! Answers could get Stephen Hawking to answer this one for us ...

Answer 5

wow now that u explain it saounds just as worse as a semi releasi fumes

Answer 6

I dont know.