Demand for Internet services and the demand for electricity

I found this post in Nicholas Carr's blog interesting. Discussions around electricity and data center demand has surfaced before elsewhere.

• This article discusses the impact of power demand on system design


• The impact of power on service provider strategies have been discussed here (and elsewhere)


• Articles like this one show how sensitive large data center firms are to the price and supply of electricity

Taken together, interesting questions begin to emerge.

Since data centers can be located anywhere, can we begin imagining an "outsourcing" of data centers (a commenter on Carr's blog suggests this)? Can this be conceived of as a strategy for economic development? To what extent do national e-commerce and energy policies intersect? Could you conceive of a tie between electricity supply and the "net neut*" debate?

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Google, Yahoo, electricity, energy, data centers, Internet, services, e-commerce, network neutrality