Spam Contributes to Global Warming

A report commissioned by global security vendor McAfee suggests that spam doesn't only cost money, but is also significantly contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. The study reveals that the energy consumed to deal with the huge amount of spam every year could be used to power 2.4 million U.S. homes.

Climate-change consultant ICF International has been hired to work along Richi Jennings, a spam expert, in order to determine the impact that junk e-mail has on the environment. The researchers calculated the average CO2 emissions for a single spam message to 0.3 grams.

In case you were wondering what that means compared to car consumption, the same amount is released by driving one meter. Multiply that by 62 trillion, the number of junk e-mails sent in 2008, and it would be enough to drive around the Earth for 1.6 million times.

The study was performed using data gathered from eleven countries, the UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Mexico, Spain and the United States. The experts took into account all the energy consumed in all the aspects of spam, such as creating, viewing, storing and filtering it.

"Globally, the annual spam energy use is 33 billion kilowatt-hours, or 33 TWh - that's as much electricity as 2.4 million U.S. homes use, with the same greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using 2 billion U.S. gallons of gasoline," Richi Jennings explains.

But why would McAfee spend money on such tests? This question might be answered by some other conclusions derived from the study. Apparently, "If every inbox were protected by a state-of-the-art spam filter [like the one McAfee sells], organizations and individuals could reduce today’s spam energy by 75 percent or 25 TWh per year, the equivalent of taking 2.3 million cars off the road."

The argument for that conclusion is that 80% of the energy wasted on spam is consumed while the users are manually dealing with it, identifying it and deleting it. The report says that spam filtering is only responsible for 16% of the energy. On the other hand, if we were to add those figures, one might argue that the process of creating spam is more environmentally friendly and energy-efficient, being responsible for the remaining four percent, at best.

"By taking an environmental approach to email spam, McAfee hopes to aid decision makers working to stem the tide of spam and open a timely conversation about how it affects the planet," [and increase sales]. As you can image, McAfee's report has been received with a dose of skepticism by many professionals.