The Daily Mail: Your iPhone guzzles more energy than your refrigerator.

iPhones burn through significantly more energy than a new mid-sized refrigerator, according to a new study. The average new mid-sized refrigerator uses about 322 kilowatt hours a year while your iPhone uses about 361 kilowatt hours annually. The majority of that energy isn’t used to charge your battery, it’s used to power data centers responsible for the wireless connections and data streaming that bring your device to life.

This revelation was made in ‘The Cloud Begins with Coal: Big Data, Big networks, Big Infrastructure and Big Power,’ a paper published by the technology investment advisory Digital Power Group.

The world’s communications systems use 1,500 terawatt hours – 10 per cent of global energy and as much as Germany and Japan combined, according to the paper. The usage is equal to total global electricity usage in 1985. [Continue reading…]