Your iPhone Uses More Energy Than A Refrigerator?

The Week’s Carmel Lobello cites a 45-page paper – ominously titled “The Cloud Begins With Coal: Big Data, Big Networks, Big Infrastructure, and Big Power,” by Mark Mills, CEO of Digital Power Group, a tech investment advisory. The paper details how the world’s Information Communication Technology (ITC) ecosystem is gobbling up a larger and larger slice of the world’s energy pie. Mills contends that while a midsize refrigerator that qualifies for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star rating uses about 322 kW-h a year, your iPhone uses about 361 kW-h if you factor in wireless connections, data usage, and battery charging.

Ms. Lobelo’s report is here:
http://goo.gl/2kYm04

You can download Mark Mills’s “The Cloud Begins With Coal: Big Data, Big Networks, Big Infrastructure, and Big Power” paper (PDF) here:
http://goo.gl/zhz86b