Powering the Digital: From Energy Ecologies to Electronic Environmentalism

Electronics and all that they plug into are energy intensive. Energy is another form of waste, like electronic waste that contributes to the material footprint of electronic technologies. This chapter examines the particular ways in which electronics use energy, from manufacture to powering devices to running cloud servers. While electronics consume energy, they are also used to manage energy consumption with the hope of achieving greater sustainability. By developing the concept of “electronic environmentalism,” the chapter considers how we might account more fully for both the environmental impacts of electronics, as well as attend to and even trouble the ways in which they guide us to think about environmental practices.