Question of the week – what do you know about network standby?

As mentioned a few weeks ago in EiD, the IEA will launch a new report, More data, less energy: Making network standby more efficient in billions of connected devices, by a webinar on July 2^nd at 13:30 Paris time.

The electricity demand of our increasingly digital economies is growing at an alarming rate. While data centre energy demand has received much attention, of greater cause for concern is the growing energy demand of billions of networked devices such as smart phones, tablets and set-top boxes. In 2013, a relatively small portion of the world’s population relied on more than 14 billion of these devices to stay connected and this could grow to more than 50 billion by 2020. That number could skyrocket to 500 billion by 2050, driving dramatic increases in both energy demand and wasted energy. Furthermore, the energy demand of ICT is growing rapidly and at a faster rate than overall electricity demand. Worldwide electricity use is increasing at a compound annual growth rate of less than 3%. Yet, compare this to a growth rate of 6% for network-enabled devices in homes and offices.

Being connected 24/7 means these information and communication technology (ICT) devices draw energy all the time, even when in standby mode because a large proportion of these devices do not power down or only power down marginally.

So, what do you think? Is this a problem? If so, how would you address it? The IEA already pioneered the global 1-watt solution for many appliances several years ago. Are we in need for another such approach?

Please give EiD your views.

Meanwhile, set aside the time on July 2^nd to participate in the webinar. Information on the launch of the publication and the webinar are available on the IEA website.