Ever wonder how much electricity it takes to run the Internet?

We’re talking about the amount of electricity it takes to to manage the infrastructure behind of all the emails, videos, documents, audio files sent online every day.

It’s not something I’ve personally taken much time to consider but the team at US Infrastructure decided to examine the stats, and then designed a gorgeous diagram illustrating all the costs and electricity involved in managing the enormous number of servers scattered across the world, holding us all up.

In Summary:

• The electricity to run these servers cost $4.5 billion a year worldwide.
• 1.5% of total US electricity consumption
• More electricity than the total number of televisions in the US (in 2006)

While the Internet brings incredible benefits from a commerce and economic perspective, it is concerning that years behind completely replacing the likes of Television, the Internet already consumes more electricity. The infographic also doesn’t take into account the computers we all use to actually connect to the web.