[LINK] NBN may increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions

[swilson at lockstep.com.au]

This is fundamentally barking up the wrong tree.  

Computers don't emit CO2 -- power stations do.  While power efficiency at the consumer end is important, the really urgent problem is to switch to electricity generation systems that don't burn carbon.  It's not even especially useful to argue to and fro about indirect improvements arising from better information etc etc etc etc.  It's just a distraction.  The real issue is how to get off coal.  

Cheers, 

Stephen Wilson
Lockstep
www.lockstep.com.au. 




-----Original Message-----
From: "Tom Worthington" <Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au>
Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2009 12:23pm
To: link at anu.edu.au
Subject: [LINK] NBN may increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The government's $43B National Broadband Network plan has 
implications for greenhouse gas emissions. An example of a negative 
effect is that higher bandwidth devices use more electricity and will 
therefore cause more greenhouse gas emissions. Also the digital 
devices connected to the network tend to use more power than old 
fashioned analog devices.  A positive effect will be if more access 
to teleconferences results in less business travel.

The ACS Victorian Branch conference this year is on the theme 
"Greening ICT towards Sustainability" 15 to 16 May 2009. I am 
facilitating a session on The Carbon Footprint and was thinking we 
might look at the environmental implications of the NBN in the 
workshop: <http://www.acs.org.au/vic/2009conference>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University  

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