[LINK] Green IT Answers the Challenge of Copenhagen

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Tom Worthington
> Sent: Thursday, 10 December 2009 11:33 AM
> To: Link list
> Subject: [LINK] Green IT Answers the Challenge of Copenhagen
> 
> 
> Opening the "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum  Sydney 
> this morning, 
> the Prime Minister, the Hon. Kevin Rudd MP, stated that 
> broadband could 
> reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Australia by 5%. Senator 
> Kate Lundy 
> then launched my book "Green Technology Strategies" to detail 
> how to do 
> this:
> <SNIP>


5%?

Tom, I haven't yet read your book, (and you may have covered what I'm
about to say), however, I have to question the Prime Minister's figure.

I have calculated at various times the saving in greenhouse emissions by
making all music and movie sales digital.
This can be added to dramatically by making all movie masters (the film
canisters sent to cinemas) digital also.

The estimated saving just from turning the entertainment industry into a
digital only delivery system has been estimated by Perceptric (Chris and
myself) as being in the order of 18% of our total greenhouse emissions.
(Australia only).

This is based on figures reported by News Limited on the offset applied
to a single movie and other more empirical data based on Australian file
sharing download habits.

As most file sharing occurs on video/TV content that is not yet
available via DVD or Amazon download (especially in Australia), the
implications for carbon offsets on digital delivery are immense. At
least $5.00 Australian per DVD movie. (Futurama -
http://www.perceptric.com/blog/_archives/2009/5/12/4182970.html).

If most movies are 90 minutes and the digital delivery carbon offset
value is $0.055 cents per minute per viewer. On the basis that the
average adult consumes 4 hours and 11 minutes of audio visual media per
day, then the saving in carbon offsets equals $13.94 per adult per day.
If we accept that 14 million Australians achieve the average viewing
times noted above, then carbon offsets of digital delivery equals 195
million dollars per day.

On the other hand if we restrict this only to the sales and hires of
DVD's we still manage to achieve a number that equals 810 minutes per
month which then equals $45.00 per month which across 7.5 million
Australian homes equals $337,500,000 per month in Carbon Offsets created
by a digital only delivery system.

That equals $4,050,000,000 per annum. Which in itself is 2 percent of
Australia's GDP.

On that basis alone the numbers would be equal to approximately 9% of
our Kyoto obligations.

Even though Australia relies mainly on fossil fuels for it's power
generation there are offsets that can be used to allow to us fully
comply with our obligations under Kyoto.

Unfortunately, media interests are not interested in making the content
available digitally, mainly because they can get more by suing for
copyright infringements.

I consider it interesting that should the Government mandate that all
content was day date released, digitally, they would solve several
problems at once.

1.	Australians wouldn't be 6 to 12 months behind in popular TV
shows.
2.	We could comply with our Kyoto obligations.
3.	The majority of file sharing activity would virtually disappear
overnight.


TomK






 



 











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