Upgrade your Laptop

Life is Busy, especially for modern knowledge workers.

Laptop computers have become essential tools enabling productivity and efficiency for today's increasingly mobile workforce.

However, these devices also carry significant environmental footprints that responsible individuals and organizations should make efforts to understand and minimize where possible. Lets look into some estimates and comparisons of the potential carbon impacts of two popular high-end laptop models under typical usage for business professionals on the move.

To begin, lets break down estimated daily usage profiles and power demands for the 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro and the Razer Blade 16 gaming-focused laptop:

These usage estimates aim to reflect a reasonably typical workload for a business traveler relying heavily on their laptop while away from the office. Time is dominated by common communication and productivity tasks like email, web browsing, conferencing and some creative work such as photo editing. More intensive computing activities may occur less frequently. 1.5 hours of minimal standby power is also factored in.

Next, to quantify potential carbon emissions from this mobile laptop usage, we first established an average emissions rate based on the United Kingdom's typical electricity generation mix.

In 2022 this is the approximate mix of power generation in the UK

Factoring in lifecycle emissions estimates for each electricity source, this generation breakdown results in approximately 0.27 kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted per kilowatt-hour (kg CO2/kWh) of electricity produced.

Many geographical, weather and technological factors influence actual grid rates, but this provides a reasonable benchmark emissions factor based on 2022 in the UK.

Applying the 0.27 kg CO2/kWh rate to the daily usage profiles over an assumed 220 working days per year, we can model estimated annual carbon footprints for each laptop.

• The more power-hungry Razer Blade results in projected yearly emissions of around 12.28 kg of CO2.

• The MacBook Pro has a lower estimated footprint of 7.25 kg of CO2 annually.

So we need to plant some trees, lets look at what we would have to plant.

If we assuming UK, Midlands based and native species of trees this table breaks down the tree type by carbon offset.

So if we assume a 3 year net even position, from sapling for my razer laptop, I need to offset around 35kg of carbon.

I need to plant an apple tree, and a pear tree, carbon offset for me would be over 3 years, 4+6+9 {for the apple tree} + 3 + 5 + 8 {for the pear tree} which gives me 35kg Offset, and fruit to eat too!

Of course, we can debate the assumptions, usage distributions and emissions analysis methodology used above. Specific hours worked and power levels will vary user to user.

However, the broader conclusions hold - the laptop hardware we choose and our usage habits manifest in measurable environmental footprints. By understanding even ballpark estimates, both individual professionals and organizations can make more informed decisions to lessen impacts.

So what practical steps might a conscientious mobile worker take to shrink the carbon footprint of their work devices and routines? While avoiding unnecessary tech consumption entirely is ideal, some energy expenditure enables productivity. So where computing power delivers genuine value, users should aim to maximize efficiency.

Strategies include:

• Consolidate communication and remove redundancies. Do all CC'ed status emails reflect value added?

• Adjust power settings for low usage periods. Dim screen brightness and set devices to sleep when paused.

• Minimize video quality and resolution if non-critical. Higher resolution streaming consumes more bandwidth and computing resources.

• Consider cloud computing options which leverage large-scale renewable energy investments and optimized utilization ratios. Well-managed shared resources can provide economies of scale.

• Prioritize laptops designed explicitly for power efficiency in areas like chips, displays, and thermal management. Battery life ratings are a useful indicator.

• Try having conversations face to face, the human brain is about is about 12 watts, its really efficient.

Ultimately, reducing the climate impacts of the tech we rely on requires advances in cleaner production, electricity generation, and product design itself. But by combining utilization efficiency, conscientious procurement, and judicious usage habits, mobile professionals can lessen their contributions while still benefiting from technology’s conveniences.

With balanced wisdom and innovation, sustainable paths exist.

The usage, emissions, and footprint estimates presented above should be viewed as initial approximations only. With collective creativity and optimism, we can refine data, calculations, and identify green solutions moving forward. As with any complex challenge, progress begins with taking the first steps. For the environmental impact of laptops and all the modern tech we increasingly depend on, the path toward sustainable balance continues.

Footnote

Ofourse, this would not be an unfold:ai post if there was not something about AI. I used AI here to help me brainstorm the topics.

I started in claude.io (claude 2) because i suspected that the data would be in many places and need consolidation.

I also tried Bing chat to help to provide some of the information, but it was fruitless. Bing fixated on some irrelevant websites and topics, and kept on telling me it could not do things, even though it was showing me the results, sort of. I just became frustrated and used google search to provide links to claude.

When I started to get data into tables in claude, despite it one time drawing it really nicely, formatting became a game of frustration. In the end I went for code based marked down for tables because I knew this was transportable.

I had a bit of a play with language and tone formatting in Claude, but I never got to neat the way I wanted the article to read, so I just decided to call it a day and copy + paste into notion.so.

Notion is where I do most of my article long form writing, I used its inbuilt AI to fix the table layouts, I then wrote / re-wrote / asked notion to tidy up my grammar, and use of tense! until I had the article above.

Then i remembered DYOR (Do Your Own Research), or rather in this case DYOM (Do Your Own Maths). I went back to claude.io and asked for a summary of the facts, tables and maths. I then hopped onto chatGPT4 and used the wolfram alpha plug in to check the basic facts and maths. All good on the emissions. Although after trying to persuade it to do some of the other maths which claude.io had done, I decided I was in the wrong tool and went to excel!

This is where I discovered that claude.io’s math had lost the subtle change that some math was in watts/Hour and some in KiloWatts / Hour, in essence adding in 1000x error rate. So i fixed that.

Squarespace blog posts still has problems with inline tables, I briefly used chatGPT3 to provide HTML compliant code to embed, but I decided good old screen shot fitted better. I will revisit this problem, the error is definitely in the user (me!).

Finally I thought I needed some imagery, any excuse to have a go with midjourney! and some creative fun. Creativity is good for the brain, and mine needed that visual fix after all this maths.