The environmental impact of billions of spam emails including unwanted emails, could lead to a reduction in our carbon footprint
Organisations have estimated that emails are contributing to climate change and are responsible for 4g of CO2 emissions.
If the email has a picture attachment, this needs extra storage and takes longer to transmit, so the carbon footprint rises to an average of 50g.
Email spam is more than just a nuisance. It’s a major contributor to the greenhouse gases causing climate change. Every day, billions of spam emails are sent around the world. These emails use energy to send and receive, and they generate carbon emissions.
Every time we send an email, we consume electricity to display it, and the network connection consumes electricity while it is being transferred.
Each server along the way temporarily stores the email until it can be passed on to the next server in the routing chain and consuming more electricity. However, sending an email consumes 0.17% as much energy as delivering a paper letter.
Data centres house servers that store the emails sent email and use a significant amount of electricity every day.
These servers require electricity for rail power, internal storage, networking, backups and even cooling.
Most of the electricity is still generated by fossil fuels, resulting in global carbon emissions (CO2e) so sending, receiving and storing emails will produce green house gas emissions.
According to phishing email stats, over 3.4 billion spam emails are currently being sent daily as part of phishing attacks in 2022 and 47.3% of all emails sent and received in 2020 were spam emails.
Its estimated that spam consumes more than 33 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year, the same amount as 2.4 million homes. It also produces the same amount of green house gas(GHG) emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars.
By implementing spam filters it has been noted they are saving 135 TWh of electricity per year which is an equivalent to 13 million cars off the road.
Globally, the world’s email usage contributes as much CO2 as having an extra seven million cars on the road, all because of the amount of energy required to operate them
The average person in a developed country contributes 136kg of CO2 to their carbon footprint by sending and receiving 65 emails in a year, comparable to driving an extra 320km in a car.
According to carbon footprint expert Mike Berners-Lee’s 2010 book an year of incoming emails will add 300 pounds of emissions to a person’s carbon footprint, or the equivalent of “driving 200 miles in an average car.”
Greenhouse Gases
Greenhouse gases are emitted whenever energy is used. While the energy required to send and receive spam is significant, it’s only part of the story.
The other part has to do with the greenhouse gas emissions that result from that energy use. One of the major greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide, and it’s produced when electricity is generated.
The amount of CO2 produced by an individual spam email is very small. But there are millions of spam emails sent every day
The hidden cost of email spam
The hidden costs of email spam are significant. Not only does it cost billions of dollars each year, but it also uses an enormous amount of energy. This energy produces carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to climate change.
How much energy does it take to store 1GB of email?
On average it currently takes 32 kWh of energy to store 1 GB of emails.However, new solid state drive technology is reducing these figures considerably.
Which counties are ranked the biggest exporters of spam?
Assuming these rankings would align with the population size of the world’s top countries, this is not exactly the case as you will see in the table below.
| DAILY # OF SPAM EMAILS IN BILLIONS | DAILY CO2E EMISSIONS FROM SPAM EMAILS IN MT | ANNUAL CO2E EMISSIONS | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 8.13 | 2439.70 | 890,489 | |
| Germany | 7.61 | 2281.97 | 832,918 | |
| Austria | 7.41 | 2223.46 | 811,561 | |
| China | 7.38 | 2213.30 | 807,847 | |
| France | 7.32 | 2194.47 | 801,347 | |
| UK | 7.29 | 2187.84 | 798,562 | |
| Poland | 7.17 | 2149.68 | 784,633 | |
| Russia | 7.10 | 2129.33 | 777,205 | |
| Brazil | 7.06 | 2116.08 | 772,562 | |
| Netherlands | 7.03 | 2108.98 | 769,776 |
What can we do to cut greenhouse gas emissions caused by spam?
Start deleting unwanted emails and spam. You can try to clear your inbox by taking time to declutter. Unsubscribe to notifications from social media and other unwanted websites from your Spam folder on a daily basis.
Small adjustments to technological digital activities that people usually do every day may play a significant role in reducing emissions on a global scale.
For example, people can adopt other big lifestyle changes, such as eating local food, buying used items, taking public transit, and so on.
By following the list below we can reduce the carbon impact of emal spam
- Flag spammy emails as they arrive.
- Delete email addresses you don’t use or need
- Consider compressing your email attachments such as images when sending messages
- Unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read or find useful.
- Don’t unnecessarily CC people who don’t need to be CC’d creating more inbox clutter
Are ICT solutions reducing global greenhouse gas emissions?
The fact that a minor impact on climate change has become such a large-scale issue is encouraging. By 2030, ICT solutions have the potential to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by up to 15.3%.
Extended summary
Reducing the carbon footprint of your emails is just one part of the solution to the climate crisis; although it is true that reducing your email carbon footprint is not typically a very effective way to do so. There are, however, lots of simple ways to reduce your carbon footprint.
Email spam is a major problem, but it’s not impossible to solve. You should make sure that your email address is not listed in any spam directories. Spam directories are online databases where spammer keep track of email addresses that are easy to break into.
If your address is listed in a spam directory, you’ll get even more spam. You can check to see if your email address is listed in a spam directory at blacklist.org and be careful about clicking links in emails. Many o these spam emails contain links to malicious websites.
Statistics Research – Tech Business News ‘
