Is all that really true?

Data of consumption

A very well founded paper about the internet power consumption in Germany is (only in German):

http://www.jahrbuch-oekologie.de/TuerkRitthoffGeiblerKuhndt2003.pdf
(take into account that it describes the situation of 2003)

More statistical data of the german situation has the VDEW (see http://www.strom.de) see the press releases there (German: "Pressemeldungen").

Also the Energy Efficient Internet Project gives more facts.

Original words of Prof. Ken Christensen: "The core of the Internet (routers, switches, etc.) in the US is estimated to consume 6 TWh/yr. But, if you add in the end nodes... then the number is more than 10x this (about 74 TWh/y is one estimate, I think). "

74TWh/year are approximately the output of three nuclear power plants (abbr. npp)! This consumption in the USA is approximately 1/3 higher than in germany (45Twh/year = 2 npp's) So you can easy see thet the users at the end of the web have the biggest consumption (that's no wonder because most users are using relative power hungry highend all-purpose PCs to surf in the web).

An example calculation:

In Germany the most npp's have two reactors (a few have one reactor, none npp has more than two) with a power output between 1GWh (e.g. Biblis) and 1,3Gwh(e.g. Gundremmingen, Isar) => max 2,6GWh per npp * 24h*365dayse=22,776 Twh/year * 2 (npp's) => approximately 45 TWh/year!

"The internet needs more power than lighting in Germany, is this true? Yes, the statistics of VDEW includes communication, BUT the power consumption is such high that even if we subtract the consumption of non-internet-communication (mobile-phones, plain old telephone system,...) the estimated power consumption exceeds the consumption of the lighting. This effect is increased by two facts 1.) the non-internet-based communication is extremly less power hungry (a phone needs only between 1-5Watt) and 2.) Lighting in germany does consume very less power due to the widespread use of enrgy-saving lighting bulbs, also in street lighting systems and nightly reduced street lighting and other lighting power safing.