Modelling of the Worldwide Electricity Consumption of ICT

Ward Van Heddeghem, Sofie Lambert, Willem Vereecken, Bart Lannoo,
Didier Colle, Piet Demeester and Mario Pickavet
iMinds-IBCN - Department of Information Technology
Ghent University
Zuiderpoort Office Park, Blok C0
Gaston Crommenlaan 8 Bus 201
B-9050 Gent, Belgium
http://www.ibcn.intec.ugent.be/content/
internet-based-communication-networks-and-services-research-group

 Abstract

In this talk, we will provide a detailed description of our modeling methodology for estimating the worldwide electricity consumption of ICT. Our study focuses on three main ICT categories: communication networks, personal computers, and data centers. For these three categories, we assess how ICT electricity consumption in the use phase has evolved from 2007 to 2012. Our estimates show that the yearly growth of all three individual ICT categories (10%, 5%, and 4% respectively) is higher than the growth of worldwide electricity consumption in the same time frame (3%). The relative share of this subset of ICT products and services in the total worldwide electricity consumption has increased from about 3.9% in 2007 to 4.6% in 2012. We find that the absolute electricity consumption of each of the three categories is still roughly equal. This highlights the need for energy-efficiency re- search across all these domains, rather than focusing on a single one.