Has anyone looked into using the power model presented in this paper to for estimating co2 emissions for data transfer?

Hi folks,

An interesting paper was published late last month that proposed a new way to talk about the environmental impact of data transfer.

It’s called Network energy use not directly proportional to data volume: The power model approach for more reliable network energy consumption calculations, and is published as an open access paper at the link below

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13512

Here’s the abstract:

> It is commonly assumed that data volume and network energy consumption are directly proportional, a notion perpetuated by numerous studies and media coverage. This paper challenges this assumption, offering a comprehensive examination of network operations to explain why the relationship between energy consumption and data volume is nonlinear. The power model approach is explored as an alternative methodology for calculating network energy consumption providing a more reliable representation of network energy use. The power model demonstrates that simple energy intensity calculations, expressed as kilowatt hours per gigabyte of data, are insufficient for accurately estimating real-world network energy consumption.

The lead author David Mytton, also writes a more accessible summary on his Substack, and he’s been working on it since 2022.
https://www.devsustainability.com/p/network-energy-use-not-directly-proportional

I've created an issue for anyone who fancies thinking through how it might be implemented below:
https://github.com/thegreenwebfoundation/co2.js/issues/218

If you have looked into it, and how you might turn it into a model you would use in a some software, I’d be interested in hearing about it, as I think this is novel, interesting, and welcome work.

At the same time, it’s not as familiar and easy to use as the SWD model we have as a default inside CO2.js, the library we maintain at the Green Web Foundation, so I think the discussion would be welcome - especially if it helps us develop better mental models for thinking about digital sustainability. 

Thanks!


Chris Adams

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