Thanks to Bill Coleman for passing on a paper by Joe Fuhr from Widener University. Bill saw Joe’s presentation at the Intelligent Community Forum and passed it (Broadband Services: Economic and Environmental Benefits) on to me.

His “study finds that wide adoption and use of broadband applications can achieve a net reduction of 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas over 10 years, which, if converted into energy saved, would constitute 11% of annual U.S. oil imports.”

Here are the potential savings:

1. Email and other electronic communications reduce the need for letters thus reducing the need for paper. Reduction in first-class mail, plastics saved from downloading music/video and office paper from emails and electronic documents could reduce emissions by 67.2 million tons.
2. Telecommuters use less gas to get to work thus saving gallons of gas. Over the next ten years that is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 247.7 million tons due to less driving, 28.1 million tons due to reduced office construction, and 312.4 million tons because of energy saved by businesses.
3. E-commerce required less square footage for shop space thus saving the energy required to operate shops. Over the next ten years that is predicted to reduce greenhouse gases by 206.3 million (U.S.) tons.
4. Teleconferences reduce the need for business travel – again saving gallons of gas for driving and/or flying to conferences and meetings. Over the next ten years that is expected to reduce greenhouse emissions by 199.8 million tons, if 10% of airline travel could be replaced by teleconferencing.

Joe points out that these savings will only be realized when broadband become ubiquitous. Right now I think cost is a big deterrent for many potential subscribers. Perhaps distilling the savings (monetary is probably better than environmental) to a family or individual level might help some potential subscribers find a way to shift expense from one bucket to another in the family budget to make broadband more affordable.

I like Joe’s paper even more than the Broadband Better than Roads report I read earlier this year.