A Sustainable Train of Thought

There’s been a lot of attention lately to power consumption on the part of Google (their data centers have huge power requirements) and something started to bother me about the new Nintendo Wii after reading this post over at Phicons. In short, the problem with having a device that constantly draws power—the Wii has low power consumption, but it’s intended to be left on 24 hours a day so that the latest updates and game data can be downloaded and ready for the next time that someone uses the console. Obviously this somewhat negates the energy saving features.

Consequently, there have been a lot of comments about the literal energy use and power consumption, but I’d like to pose a different question. Google worries about its power consumption because its computers are on-site and therefore Google has to foot the bill for its servers’ energy use. Nintendo doesn’t, because its units are sold to customers and the customer pays for the energy use. This perhaps makes sense in the case of an electric razor: my use of it is my own and I am responsible for its energy use. But although the Nintendo console is still “attached” to Nintendo through the always-on nature of the device, and it will actively suck down data on a nightly, as needed basis, the consumer is still personally paying for the power costs incurred by the console.

This isn’t a big deal on an individual level, where a couple of kWh of “lost” energy may add up to a couple of bucks. But multiply that minor amount by the several million consoles that any one company ships and the total energy and economic consequences soon become something entirely different. The problem is that by distributing the cost, that overall figure (the total energy cost of the Wii or XBox 360 or PS3) is a non-issue because nobody will ever see it.

So how do we make someone (person, business, etc.) care about a problem whose distributed nature means that nobody really cares about it? Good question, and I’d be interested in hearing some suggestions. My thought is that large companies care about millions of dollars. So somehow the total bill needs to be connected to the company that bears responsibility for creating the object, not unlike how car manufacturers face emissions regulations. I’m not suggesting regulation as a cure, but as a motivator to get companies to innovate. In this new age of green, companies will do well to tout their environmental accomplishments. And what better way to do so than to talk about energy efficiency in the grand scheme of things. It speaks well of the company’s intentions, their attention to detail, as well as their eye on the big picture. A good citizen, if you will. What company wouldn’t want that kind of publicity?

Setting aside that observation for a moment, where along the timeline of a product’s lifecycle should we draw the line where corporate responsibility ends and the individual’s responsibility begins? If a company continues to offer services through a product it’s sold, has its product really left the scope of that company’s responsibility? Put another way, if Nintendo had manufactured a device that required a lightbulb to be turned on 24 hours a day, people would notice and probably not be too happy about footing the bill. After all, Nintendo is the one stipulating that the device must remain on. It’s not a choice on the consumer’s part. As it stands, we will now have a cute little device in our living room that’s plugged into the wall and, combined with the several other million units sold across the country and around the world, will probably require at least one new power station just to meet its aggregate power demands.

For Google that would be a disaster (more money out of their pocket…yes, they have a lot of it, but humor me). But for Nintendo it’s a non-issue because the cost is passed along to the consumer. Something doesn’t seem right, but I don’t see the situation changing….yet.

Right now the tech industry is just waking up to the fact that energy costs related to computing are the critical path, so to speak. So there are already rumblings and developments which address the energy issues on a per-processor, per device basis.

At the same time, Nintendo seems to be entering a phase between products and services. You used to buy the console and that was it: you pay for the energy use because it’s directly tied to your use. Now you buy the console and it’s tethered to a company, which uploads content and updates information as needed throughout the lifetime of the device.

In a way, the Wii may be heading towards the model of thin clients. (The form factor of the Wii has an uncanny resemblance to that of thin clients.) Formalizing a relationship in those terms makes it easier to connect the device in the user’s home with the company that spawned the device, because the former is clearly dependent on the latter. Thus, services bring with them increased environmental sustainability because some of the intangible costs associated with devices are now brought back within the service infrastructure of the company. What had been previously ignored or shunted elsewhere has now been brought back under the company’s responsibility, making it in their interest to reduce these costs.

Clearly we have some ways to go before realizing such a situation. However, it’s only a matter of time before people start asking the question “who pays?” just as any business in their right mind would ask. And if the answer is “you, the customer, pays” it’s only a matter of time before those small costs aggregate to create an untenable situation, both on the household and the global scale.