Epidemic of Spam Email Results in a Giant Carbon Footprint

Anyone with an email account knows that spam is a nuisance, but as well as wasting time, unsolicited emails are also guilty of wasting huge quantities of energy, according to new research released today.

The
study from environmental research firm ICF was commissioned by
security software firm McAfee and found that the 63 trillion spam email messages
sent each year waste 33 terawatt-hours of energy — enough to power 2.4m homes.

The research also assessed the carbon footprint associated with individual
email messages and found the average message results in 0.3g of CO2 being
emitted.

Dave Marcus, security research and
communications director at McAfee, told BusinessGreen.com that while each individual email
resulted in just a “tiny puff of CO2” the global spam epidemic meant that
overall unsolicited emails resulted in carbon emissions equivalent to those
produced by 3.1m passenger cars.

“There is an energy cost with the transaction, storage and deletion of any
email,” he said. “When you add it up, we are talking about a significant
impact.”

Marcus argued that while firms could not eradicate spam completely, they
could limit its carbon impact by implementing software and policies designed to
intercept messages before they reach staff.

“The research showed that 80 per cent of the energy use associated with spam
came from the user pruning their email account,” he explained. “The opening,
closing and deletion of the message is the most energy-intensive part of the
process as the loading of images and text has a processor and heat cost that
translates to energy use.”