The only reason the servers and internet access produce CO2 emissions is because of the defective and antiquated energy production systems we use across the world. As we move towards more efficient and "cleaner" means of energy production, the carbon footprint should decrease.
Moving servers to Scandinavia would be interesting, but a unsound logistical idea. I agree that it would be a effective reuse of energy, but I am concerned about the access problem of relocating assets in one region. Now, placing new servers in Scandinavia on a grid so that the energy production can be reused is not a bad idea, but would be something for the chapters there to look at. With regards to Florida, if the servers are in an office building, one way to decrease costs might be to reconfigure the environmental systems to use the energy from the servers to heat/cool the building. Wikimedia would then be able to recoup part of the utility bills from surrounding tenants. However, engineering input would be most beneficial to considering these interesting proposals. Geoffrey ________________________________ From: Teofilo <teofilow...@gmail.com> To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sat, December 12, 2009 8:32:12 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment You have probably heard about CO2 and the conference being held these days in Copenhagen (1). You have probably heard about the goal of carbon neutrality at the Wikimania conference in Gdansk in July 2010 (2). You may want to discuss the basic and perhaps naive wishes I have written down on the strategy wiki about paper consumption (3). Do we have an idea of the energy consumption related to the online access to a Wikipedia article ? Some people say that a few minutes long search on a search engine costs as much energy as boiling water for a cup of tea : is that story true in the case of Wikipedia (4) ? How about moving the servers (5) from Florida to a cold country (Alaska, Canada, Finland, Russia) so that they can be used to heat offices or homes ? It might not be unrealistic as one may read such things as "the solution was to provide nearby homes with our waste heat" (6). (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference_2009 (2) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2010/Bids/Gda%C5%84sk#Environmental_issues (3) http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Environmental_policy_for_paper_products (4) http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece (5) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers (6) http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2009/12/08/giant-data-center-heat-london-homes _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
