Over the last 20 years the Internet has grown from almost nothing to something of enormous economic and social value.
Interdisciplinary research being undertaken by the Universities of Leeds and Cambridge has received a major boost through a £5.9m, five- year EPSRC Programme Grant award to address this issue of enabling growth of ICT networks while at the same time reducing energy consumption. The vision of the 'INTelligent Energy awaRE NETworks' (INTERNET) project is to reduce the carbon footprint of ICT networks by at least an order of magnitude - along with a corresponding reduction in non-renewable energy consumption. This will enable comparable growth beyond the current energy barrier. Professor Jaafar Elmirghani, the project's lead investigator, said: "The funding will offer us the stability and flexibility needed to address the major challenges associated with energy utilisation in telecommunication networks. I am delighted that we have been recognised in this way." Energy efficient processes are increasingly key priorities for ICT companies with attention being paid to both ecological and economic drivers. Although in some cases the use of ICT can be beneficial to the environment - for example by reducing journeys and introducing more efficient business processes - countries are becoming increasingly aware of the large growth in energy consumption of telecommunications companies. "The predicted future growth in the number of connected devices, and of the bandwidth of the Internet of an order of magnitude or two, is not practical if it leads to a corresponding growth in energy consumption.
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