While GDP grew by 1.8% in ’11, carbon emissions fell by 2.4% and total energy consumption fell by 0.5%. Better yet, since ‘90, GDP has risen 66% while carbon emissions have risen just 9%! A major reason for this is the large decline in coal’s share of electricity generation, from 53% in ’90 to 43% today, along with a concomitant rise in natural gas electricity generation from 10% to 24%.
Tag Archives: electricity
Chilling at Google
Server farms need lots of energy to cool servers. In ’10 cooling server farms consumed 1.5% of global electricity, and may jump to as much as 5% by ’17 as internet traffic continues to explode. With this in mind, Google just opened a data center in Hamina Finland where the average temperature is 35 degrees, electricity is very cheap and cold seawater will be used to cool its servers.