Environmental Impact of Valueless Stored Data

marcus

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From https://senengroup.com/sustainability/the-environmental-impact-of-data/
Title : The Environmental Impact of Data: Strategies for Sustainability (no date)
From Senen Group

... MIT reported that the cloud has a larger carbon footprint than the entire airline industry

As big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and data storage in the cloud become increasingly prominent in today’s digital age, concerns about the environmental impact of data have risen.

Storing 1 terabyte of data in the cloud has a carbon footprint of 2 tonnes annually...

At its worst, only 6-12% of the energy consumed is for active computational processes ...
Cooling, which accounts for over 40% of electricity usage in data centers ...

According to MIT Review, between 70% and 90% of data .. is considered ... valueless data ...
 
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From https://greenly.earth/en-us/blog/ecology-news/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-data-storage
Title : What is the Carbon Footprint of Data Storage?
By Stephanie Safdie , updated Dec 2024

Photos, videos, emails, text messages – many of us use our phones so often these days, that we rely on “the cloud” to store much of our precious memories. As more people utilize cloud storage to gain access to their personal files across their various devices, data cloud storage has become more widespread – and so has its impact...

... when you decide to save a file using data storage, your information is then stored in massive buildings filled with computer servers .. running at all times, in the event you want to retrieve the files you’ve saved via data storage – contributing to the extensive electricity usage used by data storage...

Retrieving your data from the cloud may seem like a simple task on the outside, but in reality – significant amounts of energy are used incessantly to ensure a user’s 24/7 access to their data... data storage now accounts for more carbon emissions than the commercial airline industry – and a single data center uses the same amount of electricity that can power up to 50,000 homes. Keep in mind, there are over 8,000 data centers all around the world, and ... data storage continues to grow ...
 
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Retrieving your data from the cloud may seem like a simple task on the outside, but in reality – significant amounts of energy are used incessantly to ensure a user’s 24/7 access to their data... data storage now accounts for more carbon emissions than the commercial airline industry – and a single data center uses the same amount of electricity that can power up to 50,000 homes. Keep in mind, there are over 8,000 data centers all around the world, and ... data storage continues to grow ...
Seems like things like changing to EV's and home use solar or wind would have absolutely zero overall impact then. But at least you have access to the vacation photos you took that you already have on a hard disk somewhere but will never likely look at them again.
 
From https://senengroup.com/sustainability/the-environmental-impact-of-data/
Title : The Environmental Impact of Data: Strategies for Sustainability (no date)
From Senen Group

... MIT reported that the cloud has a larger carbon footprint than the entire airline industry

As big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and data storage in the cloud become increasingly prominent in today’s digital age, concerns about the environmental impact of data have risen.

Storing 1 terabyte of data in the cloud has a carbon footprint of 2 tonnes annually...

At its worst, only 6-12% of the energy consumed is for active computational processes ...
Cooling, which accounts for over 40% of electricity usage in data centers ...

According to MIT Review, between 70% and 90% of data .. is considered ... valueless data ...
This is not a surprise. A big data centres, data storage, cloud services, web services, such as google, Meta, Amazon; stock exchange such as NASDAQ, NYSE, LSE, JPX, etc, Crypto mining all of them consume huge amount of electrical power. It is mainly to power the processors, servers, and HVAC / cooling equipment etc. Processor could only become more powerful but consequently will also need more electrical power and generate more heat, thus need more power to remove heat, to cool them down. This is a law in science the so called Moore's law.

A medium-big data centre will typically need around 20 MW to75 MW supply of electrical power. The three new Amazon data centres in Dublin for instance, need a combined electrical power of 70+MW.

On average, a typical household in Africa consumes 1-3 kWh/day (varies widely by region and access to appliances). So what 70MW of power could do ,
  • 70 MW × 24 hours = 1,680 MWh/day.
  • This energy could power 560,000 to 1.68 million homes with basic energy needs like lighting, phone charging, and small appliances
However, this study does not account for the energy savings that result from individuals storing their data in cloud storage. These savings arise from improved efficiency due to the collective and electronic nature of cloud storage and speedy data processing. Additionally, when people rely on physical storage (brick-and-mortar solutions), energy is consumed to maintain that physical storage, for transportation to and from the storage location to retrieve their items, which is not considered in this study. Also in term of stock trading, the transportation, maintaining and storing paper stock, work needed, comparing people trade using paper stock in the early day and the way the people trade now benefiting cloud storage. How much energy have been saved here ?.

Some people argue, the future solution is to build the data centre, crypto mining, cloud storage in the cold region such as in North Pole, Siberia, Alaska. But as the processors are becoming more powerful dan consequently need more electrical power, generate more heat, it is only a temporary solution.
 
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... when people rely on physical storage .., energy is consumed to maintain that physical storage, for transportation to and from the storage location to retrieve their items, ... in term of stock trading, the transportation, maintaining and storing paper stock, work needed, comparing people trade using paper stock in the early day and the way the people trade now benefiting cloud storage. How much energy have been saved here ?.
The above articles are not about comparing digital x physical storage , but I would like to mention that , I guess , in the past most physically stored data were valuable/important data from companies , government , ... and most paper documents (for example) probably were not stored for too long time .
Nowadays , besides companies , government , ... turning to digital storage , so many common people are also creating & storing mostly videos & photos (for example , in : You Tube , TikTok , Instagram , ...) , but a lot of valueless data which may never be deleted .

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From https://vidiq.com/blog/post/delete-old-youtube-videos/
Title : When to Delete Those Old, Embarrassing Videos on Your YouTube Channel
By Lydia Sweatt , May 2024
... On YouTube, videos are forever ...
... (You) deleting videos from your YouTube channel can lead to significant consequences, often negative ...

From https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/18/youtube-will-no-longer-be-deleting-videos-from-inactive-accounts/
YouTube will no longer be deleting videos from inactive accounts. (18 Mei 2023)
Some people argue, the future solution is to build the data centre, crypto mining, cloud storage in the cold region such as in North Pole, Siberia, Alaska ...
It would be good , but as we have seen , many countries want their data to be stored in their home country .
 
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From https://its.unc.edu/2024/08/29/dont-be-a-data-hoarder
Title : Don’t be a data hoarder: The hidden costs of digital clutter (Aug 2024)
Poster's Note : Hoarder is someone with a tendency to save everything, accumulating more and more.

When you store your life online, it’s easy to become a data hoarder. But the stuff you store carries a financial and environmental cost...

A series of reports from Goldman Sachs estimate that data centers currently account for 1-2% of worldwide power consumption, but that number may rise 160% by 2030...

Beyond the power usage, data centers also require a lot of water for cooling and generate a lot of electronic waste...

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From https://gerrymcgovern.com/90-of-data-is-crap/
Title : 90% of data is crap , Dec 2022
By Gerry McGovern (has written 8 books - his latest is World Wide Waste: How digital is killing the planet and what to do about it.

90% of data produced and stored is not simply useless; it gets in the way of useful data. Waste data makes it harder and harder to find and make use of good data...

"...The age of cheap data is over. Energy costs are going to keep rising. “A data center in an enterprise can be using up to 40% of the total energy of that enterprise,” John (Booth) explains...
How can you justify spending so much money on storing so much crap data? It doesn’t make sense. It happens because of laziness. Because people don’t want to make the effort to clean up their crap data...

“We estimated that it was £14,000 to keep one server up and running annually, including all the software and licensing aspects of it ... Up to 40% of servers in the US could be zombie servers (doing almost nothing).”...
 
It would seem to me that the greatest horders and collectors of empty data are those that collect the endless information available from users on line that is sold to or collected and used by companies to target advertising.
 

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