This morning I came across an article that tried to make the point that one's software had an impact on the power consumption of a server in a data center, and its rating on a Green Index. So by writing code in a less power hungry manner one could contribute to lower power usage, and therefore lower global carbon emissions. Interesting. So if we were to spend a lot of time and effort to convince the several million writers of server side software to keep this in mind we could, ostensibly, save a few tons of coal burning cross the myriad power stations around the globe.
Actually this struck me as being quite hilarious because it illustrates quite nicely how the melange of media and bloggers (guilty as charged) can muddy the waters.
Assuming human emission of carbon and climate change are an issue (something not everyone seems to agree on) let us look at relative causes.
Motor vehicles are significant, and people beat each other up about this regularly. However, driving an American monster truck is actually benign relative to some other causes.
Electricity usage by households has an impact, and efforts like Earth Hour try to bring this point home. However, switching off a couple of light bulbs may impact your power bill but is really quite small in the bigger scheme of things.
Industry has a much bigger role to play in power usage, but it is generally quite efficient since factories are run on tight financial budgets to increase profitability. In other words they can afford whatever techniques and technology will lower their costs.
Mines are power gluttons and will remain such while commodity prices are high. Public oversight has improved in this area in recent years and one hopes it will continue to.
A massive contributor is the wood fire, used by several billion people globally, to cook their meals. Some estimates put the impact of cooking fires at about half of our carbon footprint. There are many initiatives globally to teach and disseminate more efficient cooking technologies such as pyrolytic stoves.
Then there is the elephant in the room, the Mokita.
The production of oil and gas around the world is a massive industry, and a little known fact is that is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, carbon emitter of all. The practice of flaring gas is part and parcel of the production of oil, and one often punished with hefty fines if unbridled.
Flaring is permitted because it is necessary for various safety checks and procedures, to prevent pressure build up and emergency situations. Ideally gas released during drilling should be captured to either resell or re-inject into the ground.
Reselling gas is viable, but often drilling is performed where there are no pipelines to transport the gas to market. It is not regarded as economically viable to store the gas in tanks and transport those.
Re-injecting gas is also a way to extend the life of an oilfield. Oil does not occur in convenient subterranean lakes, but exists between rocks, soil and other material underground. The pressure of the gas in the same substrates is what drives the oil, like water through a sponge, to where it enters the pipe drilled down into the ground and emerges as a mix of oil, ground water and gas. Once the gas pressure falls below a certain point the oil stops flowing. At this point, with the technology we have, we have probably extracted no more than 25% of the oil in the ground. By re-injecting the gas we get to extract more oil.
However, the greed of men being what it is, the theory and the practice differ significantly. Satellite images show enormous patches of light in oil drilling areas at night, brought about by the flaring of gas 24/7, 365 days of the year. The oil companies are simply too busy producing black gold and do not have the inclination to extend the lifetimes of their wells (there is always another oilfield to exploit) or produce energy more efficiently.
In countries like Nigeria there are millions living with no electricity, using life threatening and carbon spewing wood fires, all around oil wells flaring enormous quantities of gas every day. It simply is not economically or politically expedient to give these people free energy to use, despite the riches flowing from the very soil they were born on. The Nigerian oil fields are the brightest spots seen from space in Africa. In Russia (Siberia) people are given cheap energy, but the same bright patches are seen along the Arctic wastes where few people live. Other oil rich areas around the world all exhibit the same tell-tale lights.
So next time you experience angst and guilt over your failure to write efficient code, drive anything that uses more gasoline than a Tesla, or leave your phone charger on even if you aren't charging your phone, ask yourself why gas flares are so absent in the media and government debate on the subject.
More reading here on how this is handled in the USA.
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