In terms of energy conservation, the leaps made in energy efficiency by the infrastructure and devices we use to access the internet have allowed many online activities to be viewed as more sustainable than offline.
On the internet, however, advances in energy efficiency have a reverse effect: as the network becomes more energy efficient, its total energy use increases. This trend can only be stopped when we limit the demand for digital communication.
Although it's a strategy that we apply elsewhere, for instance, by encouraging people to eat less meat, or to lower the thermostat of the heating system, limiting demand remains controversial because it goes against the belief in technological progress. It's even more controversial when applied to the internet, in part because few people make the connection between data and energy.
How much energy does the internet consume? Due to the complexity of the network and its fast-changing nature, nobody really knows. Estimates for the internet's total electricity use vary by an order of magnitude. One reason for the discrepancy between results is that many researchers only investigate a part of the infrastructure that we call the internet.
