E-commerce = energy-commerce?

Sudden rise in electricity demand in Amsterdam

The new economy has brought an unexpected problem. In Amsterdam, the capacity of the existing electricity network is insufficient: the rest of Europe will probably face this problem in a few years.

There are plans for about 25 new offices in the ICT sector (computers, software, e-commerce, Net and telecom). When the electricity company added up all the requests for extra electricity, it found they would increase demand by 200 MegaWatt. Normal use in Amsterdam (800 000 inhabitants) is 300 MW.

The main reason for the growth is that Amsterdam has been very successful in attracting investment in the new sectors. This is surprising, because Amsterdam had no large computer/electronics/software sector before this. The small but highly-publicised Internet pioneers, such as xs4all, are not the basis of the present new media and ICT sector. The symbol of success in the 'Standort' battle, is the decision by Cisco to locate its European headquarters in Amsterdam. Cisco has overtaken Microsoft as the world's largest company by share value): this will be the largest investment in Amsterdam for 20 years. The Cisco building will be the largest office building in the country: it is not even included in the total of 200 MW. So, neoliberal 'success' in attracting investment brings new problems.

After a special meeting to discuss the possible electricity crisis, wethouder (Stadtrat) Pauline Krikke promised that all the new companies will have enough electricity. New cables will be laid in the next 2 years, and some small new power stations may be built, near the users. Not all the extra capacity may be necessary in the first years: the new firms are requesting a maximum capacity, not an average. Nevertheless, this is a warning for the rest of Europe that the new economy has its price, in environmental terms. The early mythology of cyberspace - "freedom from material limits" - is proved false.

If the new power stations are constructed, they will be a symbolic denial of Kevin Kelly and the other prophets of 'dematerialisation' (see Nirvana of Flow). They will be constructed specifically for network use: it is 'server farms' which cause the new power demand. And the worst is yet to come: the growth rate of network use is extremely high, although no-one knows exactly how high. On the assumption, that Amsterdam is providing all the extra capacity for the Netherlands, a similar increase would mean 4600 MW extra capacity in the EU. That is about four large nuclear power stations: very different from the 'clean and green' image of the new economy.

This is the apparently the first example of such a dramatic increase in Europe. There is some discussion in the USA, about a huge increase in electricity consumption. One estimate is that the USA already uses 8% of its electricity for the Internet, but that comes from an organisation associated with the coal-mining industry. Other experts say it is 1%. See these sites:

In Europe this issue seems to be unknown. When I called the Netherlands association of energy producers, to ask about research into this problems, it was the first time they had heard of it. The last national energy prognoses were made in 1995, and still talk about dematerialisation. And the EU does not seem to think about any possible negative side-effects, in its promotion of e-Europe. But there is a possible 'nightmare scenario' in which computers and telecom equipment become the main users of energy, and new power stations are built all over Europe to cope with demand. And with individual office buildings already using 20 MW of electricity, and new mega server-parks being planned, the network economy would begin to influence the local micro-climate. Time to question the mythology of non-material cyberspace, and the clean image of the new economy.