2022-02-24

2022-02-24

“When Global Tools began its activities, Italian industry and politics were going through a crucial period: the last great strike of the FIAT workers in 1973 was followed by the energy crisis with the consequent austerity measures, and this setback put an end to a period of growth and high employment rates, revealing the changes in the Italian industry, now transformed by new technologies and the development of the tertiary sector.” (https://not.neroeditions.com/global-tools/)

n the light of what has happened this morning, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the pre-announced coming of a new widespread energetic crisis, I’m wondering if we are facing similar conditions of crisis. Italy, as much as other European countries, largely depends on natural gas provided by Russia. Italy is the European country that most uses natural gas: a 42.5% share of the whole Italian energy need. (https://www.ispionline.it/it/pubblicazione/energia-5- mappe-capire-la-crisi-del-gas-33342) It is due to the fact that Italy produces 60% of its electricity using gas. (https://www.ispionline.it/it/pubblicazione/energia-5-mappe-capire-la-crisi-delgas- 33342) An infrastructure-related issue, that has to deal with the morphology of the territories. The dependence on Moscow’s resources is a structural and geographical fact: it is much easier and cheaper to transport gas by pipe, and in the Italian case, necessarily has to pass through Ukraine. Today, more than ever in my personal experience, I realised what could mean to be energetically independent. Our living environment must be prepared as soon as possible to be self-reliant and sustainable. Starting from our web server, that has to be provided by solar energy. Webservers are not used to sleep.

If full energy independence currently sounds more like a utopia, especially considering the electricity need of Cà de Monti (21kw as average daily consumption), it’s also true that is necessary to give more thought to the waste, yet considered as non-necessary consumption of energy. For instance, our webserver is constantly running, even when no one is checking our website. Full-time availability has a price that must be considered because it has a tangible impact. We could rawly consider restricting our web accessibility for western countries only in the daytime, presuming that most of the users are used to sleeping between 1 am to 8 am. In this case, we could reduce daily consumption by up to 8 hours in relation to our online presence.