i'm actually a bit surprised that this didn't show up here first. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20001218/tc/power_struggle_1.html basically there are competing views on how much energy the internet and it industries use. a choice quote: "Moving 2 megabytes of data on the Net, they said, requires the energy equivalent of 1 pound of coal. And with hundreds of millions of new digital devices, ranging from digital X-ray machines to Palm handheld computers, getting plugged in, the future of our economy depends on burning more fossil fuels, including coal, which produces 56 percent of the electricity used in America. All those Net-related electronics consume "up to 290 billion kWh [kilowatt-hours] of demand. That's about 8 percent of total U.S. demand," they wrote. "Add in the electric power used to build and operate stand-alone [unnetworked] chips and computers, and the total jumps to about 13 percent. It's now reasonable to project that half of the electric grid will be powering the digital Internet economy within the next decade." -- e: michael@ele-mental.org c: +1.614.260.6716 u: www.ele-mental.org Wir fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn