Absolutely right.Reachable wrote:Hmmm. If you look at it that way, the energy required to make the materials for a car is what? 10%, 15%, 20% of what it will use to operate during it's life.
I was surprised by the figures because 58 MJ is equal to about 16 kilowatt hours of electricity. You can do a lot with that.
For a whole computer system -- desktop PC + 17" CRT -- the total resources need for production is 240kg of fossil fuels, 22kg of chemicals and 1500kg of water. 240kg of fossil fuels = 5040MJ. 75% of the energy consumption of a PC occurs during its production stage. As you note, with a car, it's about 10% (2000kg of fossil fuels). If you look at it from energy/weight ratio, the car is perhaps 2:1 while the computer is more like 10~20 to 1. It's far more energy intensive to make, due to the high energy needed to make silicon chips and other semiconductors. Also, a car's useful life is at least 10 years while computers are typically retired within 2-3 years. (The total energy for production of LCDs is not dissimilar -- it is much more energy intensive than CRT to produce, but it weighs less.)
Not for PC cases, we don't.Anyway, we need the materials. Let's not torment ourselves over it too much.
