Here’s a fun fact for you: in 2007, YouTube used as much bandwidth as the entire internet did in 2004. Why do I bring this up? Because as web providers increase in size, they are both struggling to deal with the exponentially rising costs and increasing their contribution to global carbon emissions.

The Guardian in the UK estimates that the Internet’s energy footprint is expanding by 10 percent ever year, and with the rising energy costs come lower ad revenue, putting companies in a bind: they want to continue to grow, but the cost of expansion is far from covered by the sale of ads on their sites. Though Google does not release such information, one estimate puts YouTube’s losses at up to $470 million this year.

But at the same time, the internet as a whole is drastically expanding its carbon footprint every year, leapfrogging even the airline industry. As one scientist says, “Efficiency is being more than overwhelmed by continued growth and demand for new services. It’s a common story…technical improvements are often taken back by increased demand.”

One study…commissioned by the US environmental protection agency, suggested that US data centres used 61bn kilowatt hours of energy in 2006. That is enough to supply the whole of the UK for two months, and 1.5% of the entire electricity usage of the US… American data centres could account for as much as 80bn kWh this year.

Companies are trying to lower their energy consumption, but at this point, it’s difficult to tell whether anything is working. Microsoft is actually using older machines in their Cambridge, England headquarters, because older machines were designed to be more efficient in order to save the battery. Google spent an estimated $2.3 billion on infrastructure last year to try and become more efficient, but doesn’t release their results. So, we’re not quite sure where this is all headed, but even the vice president of Sun Microsystems is on the record as saying, “In an energy-constrained world, we cannot continue to grow the footprint of the internet…we need to rein in the energy consumption.” So let’s work on that, yeah?