In this eight‑minute podcast, sustainability consultant Will Richardson explains that the internet’s greenhouse‑gas emissions now exceed those of international aviation, accounting for 1.5‑4% of global emissions. He provides updated 2026 carbon figures for common digital actions—0.3 g CO₂e per short email, 0.2 g per Google search, and 42 g per hour of HD streaming—showing that earlier, much larger estimates were overstated due to improvements in data‑center efficiency. Richardson warns that artificial intelligence will drive a 15 % annual rise in data‑center electricity demand through 2030, potentially pushing emissions to 500 million tons by 2035, though well‑deployed AI could offset this growth. He argues that businesses should stop obsessing over micro‑actions like email and instead focus on high‑leverage decisions: (1) measure the carbon footprint of cloud, hosting, and software use; (2) procure services based on the grid intensity of the data‑center location; and (3) audit and lean the digital estate by retiring unused software, optimizing websites, and managing AI deployments. These steps not only cut emissions but also reduce costs and improve performance, aligning with emerging reporting mandates such as SECR, CSRD, and SBTI. Richardson ends with a call to action for listeners to subscribe, share their digital‑footprint experiences, and consider his firm 51 to Carbon Zero for professional assistance.
Chapters
Hey, thanks so much for listening. I would love to be able to help you more on what it is that you are listening to and why you're listening to, to me. If you could click on the link in the show notes, that would be awesome because it will help me define what it is that we should be talking about on this podcast. What ChatGPT actually costs the planet. I did the maths. If your business runs on the internet, and almost every business now does, you have a carbon footprint sitting in plain sight that your board has almost certainly never measured. Here is the scale of it. If the internet were a country, its emissions would rank higher than international aviation. Higher than every passenger flight on the planet combined. In the next eight minutes, I'm going to give you three things: real carbon numbers for 2026, not the inflated ones you have probably seen shared online; why artificial intelligence is about to make this much, much bigger; and the three. Moves your business should make this quarter, every one of which also cuts your costs. I've spent 25 years in sustainability consulting, and this is one of the most misunderstood topics I deal with. Let's fix that. The scale that nobody talks about. When we talk about emissions, the conversation is always transport, heavy industry, power generation. But there is one source that slips under the radar completely, despite being used by 2/3 of the world every single day: the internet itself. The joint World Bank and ITU report puts the ICT sector's share of global greenhouse gas emissions at somewhere between 1.5% and 4%. Even the conservative estimate is at least 1.7%. That is already larger than the footprint of international aviation, and it is growing fast. The driver is electricity. Data centres alone consumed around 415 terawatt-hours in 2024. That is roughly 1.5% of all electricity used on Earth. And the International Energy Agency expects that to more than double by 2030. So here is the shift business leaders need to make. Digital decisions are now energy decisions. Where you host, what you stream, how you build, all of it is a carbon choice. What your online activity actually costs. Now, you have probably seen the scary numbers, the viral posts about how one email destroys the planet. I want to clear that up because most of those figures are wrong, and the truth is way more useful. Here is where credible data sits in 2026. A typical short email emits around 0.3 grams of CO2 equivalent. A standard Google search, roughly 0.2 grams. An hour of HD video streaming, around 42 grams. If those numbers sound small, that is because they are. They are far smaller than the figures shared back in 2018 because data centers and electricity grids have become dramatically more efficient. The old claim of 10 kilograms of carbon per hour of streaming. That has been broadly retracted. The real figure is hundreds of times lower. But here is the lesson, and this is the bit I really want you to take away. These actions are still meaningful at scale, but organizations should not obsess over micro-actions and miss what actually moves the needle. There was a famous campaign a few years ago telling people to stop sending thank you emails to save the planet. It got huge coverage, but the expert whose figures it was based on later said it plainly: the footprint of a single email is trivial. Focusing on it distracts from the decisions that genuinely matter. And personally, I think a thank you is better for humanity anyway. So cutting digital clutter is a fine habit, but it's not the strategy. The strategy is where you host, what you procure, and how you measure. AI is changing the equation. Here is what changes everything, and it is the reason this topic is suddenly urgent. Artificial intelligence, the AI EA expects data center electricity demand to grow by around 15% every year through to 2030. That is 4 times faster than overall electricity demand is growing. The United States and China account for nearly 80% of that growth. Emissions from data centers electricity could rise from 180 million tons today to as much as 500 million tons by 2035. But here is the part that makes this genuinely interesting and not just alarming. The same report points out a counterweight. If existing AI applications are deployed well across other industries, they could deliver emission reductions that more than offset the growth in data center demand. In other words, AI could be a net negative for the climate or a net positive. And which one we get is not fixed. It depends entirely on the choices businesses make, which AI use case you pursue, how the infrastructure behind them is powered. This is a decision, not a forecast. What your business should do this quarter. So what do you actually do with this? If you're in food and beverage or media, marketing and advertising especially, your digital infrastructure is not a back office concern anymore. It sits inside your Scope 2 and Scope 3 footprint. It is increasingly disclosed under SECR and CSRD. Regulators are watching it. 3 moves, and you can start all of them this quarter. Measure what you actually use. Get a baseline of your cloud, hosting, and software emissions across the business. Most organizations are genuinely surprised by what they find. Procure with grid intensity in mind. Where your data center physically sits and how that local grid is powered makes a far bigger difference than any individual person's behavior. This is the high-leverage decision. And 3, audit your digital estate. Lean websites, retired software subscriptions you are not using, disciplined AI deployment— every one of those cuts costs as well as carbon. And that is the rare alignment here. Almost every action that reduces your digital emissions also reduces your costs. Improves your performance, and sharpens your customer experience. You very rarely get all of those pulling in the same direction. Here you do. So what call to action have we got? Here is the takeaway: the internet is not a side issue in the climate conversation. It is one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand on the planet, and the decisions that shape it are being made right now. In marketing teams, IT functions, and procurement departments, probably in yours. If this was useful, here is what I would do on this channel. Every week, I take one piece of sustainability conversation that businesses are getting wrong, and I give you the real numbers and what to actually do about it. Subscribe so you don't miss it. Drop a comment with one thing Has your business ever measured its digital footprint? I genuinely want to know how many have, because in my experience, it's almost none. And if you are a sustainability professional or advisor, I'm building a referral network of practitioners who do this work properly. The link is in the description. At 51 to Carbon Zero, we help FTSE, NASDAQ, XTRA, and IBEX listed organizations build a credible digital sustainability baseline and fit it into their wider SECR, CSRD, and SBTI reporting. If that is the conversation you need, the details are below. I'll see you next week.
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