The Dark Cloud

A gripping new investigation into the underbelly of digital technology, which addresses the pressing question of the carbon footprint it leaves behind. If digital technology were a country, it would be the third-highest consumer of electricity behind China and the United States. Every year, streaming technology generates as much greenhouse gas as Spain -- close to 1 per cent of global emissions. The video of 'Gangnam Style' was viewed around 1.7 billion times, using about 297 gigawatt hours, equivalent to that of a city with a population of 100,000. One Google search uses as much electricity as a lightbulb left on for 35 minutes. It turns out that the 'dematerialised' digital world, essential for communicating, working, and consuming, is much more tangible than we would like to believe. Today, it absorbs 10 per cent of the world's electricity and represents nearly 4 per cent of the planet's carbon dioxide emissions. We are struggling to understand these impacts, as they are obscured to us in the mirage of 'the cloud'. The result of an investigation carried out over two years on four continents, The Dark Cloud reveals the anatomy of a technology that is virtual only in name. Under the guise of limiting the impact of humans on the planet, it is already asserting itself as one of the major environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.