Islamabad : COMSTECH organised an online webinar on Energy consumption by information and communication technologies: facts and challenges on Tuesday to educate the participants on the growing energy consumption through the emergence of the latest technologies.
The webinar was delivered by Prof. Sami Erol Gelenbe, a Turkish computer scientist, an electronic engineer, and applied mathematician currently serving at the Polish Academy of Science, Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics in Gliwice, Poland.
Prof. Sami mentioned that information and communication technologies impact the amount of energy that we consume in the world and impact the CO2 or other emissions that are influencing global warming.
He said, “Having online meetings we save travel energy but at the same time we consume the energy of electrical power in megawatts because we could not possibly operate online conversation if we don’t have in the background, some very large data centres, and the millions of routers and fibre optics lines and copper connections for the digital interfaces.
“Responding to the question Prof. Sami said, “ICT has a significant environmental impact both good and bad, including heat dissipation and of course energy consumption, production, and transportation cost.
So the energy in ICT is a substantial part of the cost.
“He mentioned that the energy has a real impact on the profitability.
And energy extraction of whatever kind we use has a significant environmental impact.
Prof. Sami concluded that ICT systems are complex and highly interconnected.
Although individual components are more energy-efficient, however, the complexity and the interconnectivity make them more energy-consuming.
He mentioned, “The presence of ICT is growing and new applications such as cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and artificial intelligence are highly energy-consuming. For instance, it is estimated that Bitcoin consumes as much electricity as a small country, the Netherlands.
Prof. Sami suggested careful analysis, experimentation, and active management reduces energy consumption and the environmental impact of the use of information and communication technologies.
“Coordinator General COMSTECH, Prof. Dr. M. Iqbal Choudhary in his introductory remarks said, “Today people from different continents are attending this first webinar of the COMSTECH-MSTF webinar series.”
