Mustafa(Pbuh) Prize laureate: ‘energy consumption by ICT is steadily increasing’
Sami Erol Gelenbe, a 2017 Mustafa(Pbuh) Prize laureate, addressed energy consumption by Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in an online event held by Mustafa(Pbuh) Science and Technology Foundation and COMSTECH on April 18, 2022.
MSTF Media reports:
Gelenbe began the session by stating that “progress is achieved through facts and reasoning so as to make choices that people can understand, agree to, and share.” For Gelenbe this has great implications for ICT and energy consumption.
According to the Mustafa
Prize laureate, “Energy consumption by ICT is a critical issue because ICT has significant environmental impacts, both good and bad, including heat dissipation.”
“Energy is costly to extract and to transport, and most energy extraction has an environmental impact; ICT manufacturing requires energy and has environmental impacts, such as increasing CO2 and global warming,” Gelenbe stated.
The computer scientist maintained that “ICT is more a physical system and its operation is related more to physics, nanotechnology, etc. This physical reality influences the energy consumption.”
“Unknowingly we are all consuming megawatts of power. This zoom meeting needs so much data which is powered by electricity,” Gelenbe went on.
Examining figures from 2019 (2020 and 2021 being “abnormal years” because of the Covid-19 pandemic), Gelenbe stated that 8 to 9 percent of worldwide electricity was used by ICT, that is data centers, networks, end-users, and manufacturers.
He believes that “energy consumption by ICT is not static, but steadily growing.”
“About a decade ago this number was 4 percent. Now it has doubled. So, there is a relative increase in energy. And this question is really critical,” he stated.
“The notion of energy efficiency is not presented to the public in a fair manner. For example, a Zoom call needs much more data transmission compared to a phone call. It takes more ICT energy even though the equipment takes less energy. ICT is increasing its share of energy consumption and its volume. In ten years it will have doubled,” Gelenbe warned.
The Mustafa
prize laureate also noted, “new applications such as crypto-currencies are highly ‘energyvorous.’ In 2020, the energy consumption of Bitcoin equaled that of the Netherlands.”
Gelenbe concluded that ICT systems are complex and highly interconnected. Also, as it becomes more complex it can consume more energy. According to him, adaptive management schemes must be used to reduce ICT energy consumption and environmental impact.
Sami Erol Gelenbe is a professor in the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He won the Mustafa Prize in 2017 for inventing the random neural network and the eponymous G-networks. Gelenbe is known for pioneering the field of modelling and performance evaluation of computer systems and networks throughout Europe.
