Stop sending those pointless e-mails for the love of your coworkers and the planet.
It turns out that the data we use — from "reply all" e-mails to the loads of seemingly harmless memes sent to friends and family — all make a climate impact. The good news is that we can change our behaviors to help solve this problem.
What's happening?
You've probably seen countless memes of Moo Deng the hippo by now. And while they're absolutely adorable, all these memes, videos, photos, and other data we use are having a sizable impact on the environment.
The Guardian reported on the problem, explaining that all of this data is generally used or seen once and then stored indefinitely on the cloud. In fact, the overwhelming majority of data stored in the cloud is deemed "dark data," or data that is used once and then never visited again. Yet, this data sits there in a storage facility, using up energy.
Ian Hodgkinson, a professor of strategy at Loughborough University, has studied this subject and found that 68% of data used by companies is never used again. He estimates that it's probably about the same for personal data.
Why is dark data important?
For one thing, individuals are paying for that storage. For instance, two terabytes of data is currently $9.99 a month on Apple's iCloud+.
"Now effectively, you're paying for something which you're not ever going to use again, because you're not even aware it exists," Hodgkinson told the Guardian.
Plus, it has dire implications for the planet, he added.
"When we think about the significant costs it has for financial terms, but also the environment, to the bigger picture … we're falling short of the required trajectory to meet that zero by 2050."
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, data centers are the most energy-intensive type of buildings, consuming 10 to 50 times the energy per floor space compared to a typical commercial office building. In the U.S., they account for 2% of all energy use, the agency says, and that number is expected to continue to rise in coming years. In fact, Goldman Sachs researched the expected growth of data centers in the U.S. and estimates they will be using 8% of the country's power by 2030.
What's more, many of these data centers are still powered by dirty fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas, which are responsible for more than 75% of planet-warming pollution. Consequences of an overheating planet include more severe and frequent storms that threaten people and property, easier spread of some diseases like malaria, and food shortages due to extreme heat and droughts.
What's being done about dark data?
According to Hodgkinson, two easy ways that people can help with dark data are sending fewer "pointless" e-mails and avoiding the "reply all" button. He also encourages people to think about the impacts of certain pieces of technology they use, such as ChatGPT.
"For many individuals, they believe that to be carbon neutral, but it isn't," he told the Guardian. "So asking ourselves those questions [that] we've never really asked before within organizations and individuals can make such a big difference for behavioral change."
Meanwhile, some companies are trying to improve the environmental impact of data centers. For one, a project in Germany is constructing data centers inside wind turbines to make them more sustainable. Plus, Microsoft is looking to use nuclear energy to power its data centers (although this energy source is controversial due to past nuclear accidents).
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