Critics and politics
Several statistics counter those assumptions. For instance, Koomey and Alan Sanstad, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley, pointed to the EIA's 1999 calculation that all personal computers, including residential and commercial, use just 1.4 percent of the nation's power.
In fact, EIA data reveal that American homeowners use twice as much electricity running color televisions as they do operating PCs, and that TV power consumption will grow at a faster rate than demand from PCs will grow. An EIA stat that supports Mills predicted that electricity use by PCs in the commercial sector will grow at 5.1 percent per year through 2020, a rate far above that predicted for overall electric consumption.
The sharpest criticism of Mills has come from people like Lovins - who calls Mills a "liar" - and Joe Romm, executive director at the Centre for Energy and Climate Solutions, who has written extensively about how the Net is increasing the U.S. economy's efficiency. Last year, a report he co-authored about the Internet and global warming argued that computers and the Internet were creating structural changes in the economy that were reducing the demand for energy. EIA data appear to support his thesis. The amount of energy needed to produce US$1 of gross domestic product has been falling since 1991, and that trend has accelerated dramatically. Since 1996, energy intensity has fallen at an average rate of 3.2 percent per year, a phenomenon that Romm said is difficult to explain without including the effect of the Internet.
Romm and others said the equipment used to power the Internet is becoming much more efficient, thanks in part to the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program, which is reducing the power demands of personal computers. What's more, they said, the basic building blocks of the Internet are also becoming more efficient. Intel's Pentium-class processors can require several dozen watts of power. Lovins pointed out that the new Crusoe processors from Transmeta, which will compete with Intel's chips, "draw, at most, 6 watts." And it won't be long, he predicted, before manufacturers begin building more energy-efficient servers to reduce their operating cost.
Despite Lovins' projections, there's a nagging question: If the Internet is making the economy more energy efficient and the 8 percent figure is wrong, why have Huber and Mills received so much attention, while Lovins and his allies have largely been ignored?
Romm accuses Huber and Mills of making radical estimates to draw attention to their $295-per-year newsletter. (Full disclosure: This reporter is a subscriber). "You get media coverage if you adopt an extreme, offbeat, unusual point of view," Romm said. Others, like Taub, blame it on the "Gilder Effect." Since Huber and Mills are associated with Gilder, many people assume they must be correct. "And if you repeat it enough, it starts to gain credibility because you hear it from so many sources," Taub said.
Mills said his critics are missing the point. He no longer cares what percentage of domestic electricity the Internet consumes. "I have chosen not to engage in the question of whether it's 5 [percent] or 6 [percent] or 8 percent," he said. Lovins and Romm can discuss global warming all they want, Mills said. They want to "save the planet," he said. "I'm not interested in saving the planet. . . . My objective is to keep silicon lit. And there's going to be a huge market for people who want to keep silicon lit."
Wall Street is more skeptical. "It's too early to call this," said Sam Brothwell, a stock analyst at Merrill Lynch who has been monitoring the debate. "I think there's anecdotal evidence that computer usage is growing, and it's having a significant impact" on total electricity consumption, he said. "But it's very hard to translate that into a number."
Right or wrong, Huber and Mills have left their mark on discussions about power and the Internet. And given the shortage of power in California and the EIA's projections for increased electricity usage, the utility industry is investing billions of dollars in new power plants. Lovins hopes that much of new demand will be met by nonpolluting technologies, such as fuel cells, and by renewable energy sources. "Wind power is growing 25 [percent] to 26 percent per year," he said. And photovoltaic cells, he predicted, will soon compete in price with other generation methods.
Mills said he, too, favours using fuel cells and renewable energy sources. But he said he doubts they can supply all the power needed. "We have to face real life. We have to provide power for the Internet economy," he said. "And that means burning gas, oil and coal."
