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by jonas21 1581 days ago
I wouldn't put too much weight into that number. Studies of energy usage for data transfer vary by over 5 orders of magnitude depending on their assumptions. This paper [1], which is an analysis of 14 different studies, came up with 0.06 kWh/GB in 2015, with energy usage halving every 2 years. Assuming the trend continued, that would put it at less than 0.01 kWh/GB today.

The claim about CO2 emissions for a Google search was also contested at the time and later retracted by the original source [2][3]. Unfortunately, once on the internet, these things just keep getting repeated.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12630

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2009/01/12/revealed-the-times-made-up...

[3] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/powering-google-sear...