[Another excellent analysis by Andrew Odlyzko on Internet's role in aggravating and alleviating the Internet. I fully agree with his analysis on the limited of possibility of reducing CO2 emission by substituting transportation of atoms with electrons (or photons) through telecommuting and tele-presence. These are useful applications, but the real power of the Internet to affect human behaviour in reducing CO2 emissions will come in other areas - as for example in the (yet unproven) idea of providing "carbon reward" rather than taxes by offering free eProducts and eServices in exchange for consumers reducing their own carbon footprint in other aspects of their lives. Consumers control or influence 60% of human generated CO2 emissions, so the Internet may be powerful tool to induce them to change their behaviour. --- BSA]
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/internet.energy.crises.txt
The Internet has long been touted as a major weapon in reducing road congestion, through enabling and stimulating telecommuting. More recently, it has been promoted as a means to fight global warming. (An excellent source of information on these topics is Bill St. Arnaud's "Green IT/Broadband and Cyber-Infrastructure" blog at
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/.) But these hopes fly in the face of centuries of experience. It is likely that the Internet will play a major role in alleviating problems caused by any of several energy crises that we face, but if so, this will not take place as commonly
expected.
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This blog is about using ICTs to develop climate change preparedness solutions built around Energy Internet and autonomous eVehicles
Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview
Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.
Using autonomous eVehicles for Renewable Energy Transportation and Distribution: http://goo.gl/bXO6x and http://goo.gl/UDz37
Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG
High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: https://goo.gl/24SiUP
Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet: http://goo.gl/niWy1g
How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd