by Max Frankel
Here’s an interesting statistic: Internet users who have email accounts with Yahoo! use about 11% more electricity than users with Gmail accounts from Google, according to the energy efficiency company Opower.
As Opower’s Barry Fischer points out on the company’s new data blog, that difference in energy consumption is equal to the annual electricity consumption of Barbados.
Both email systems have over 1 million subscribers, representing a wide swath of America. So what can differences in users’ energy habits tell us about them as customers?
It’s not differences in geography. If all Yahoo! users were living in one climate and all Gmail users lived in another more moderate environment, that might explain such a wide disparity. But that’s not the case. The 1.1 million users Opower examined for the study were distributed across 23 different states, so environment and climate differences don’t explain the difference.
Age and lifestyle may give us some clues. Opower uncovered some fascinating data on these factors. The typical Yahoo! subscriber is older than the typical Gmailer — 38 versus 34. Yahoo! users are also more likely to live in suburban or rural areas, which, according to a 2009 American Housing Survey, are 7-13 percent larger than the city dwellings that Gmail users inhabit, which explains some of the extra electricity consumption.
But it turns out Yahoo! users also consume as much as 12 percent more energy per square foot.
Gmail users are, on average, younger, more likely to be single, more avid travelers (meaning time out of the house lowers local energy consumption), and up to 30 percent “more likely than Yahoo users to sign up for an in-depth analysis of how they can reduce their energy usage.”
Turns out, Yahoo! users and Gmail users lead fairly different lives. By applying these sociological differences to energy data, we can get a slightly better glimpse into the behavior of consumers.
– Max Frankel is a senior at Vassar College and a CAP intern.
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So if the Gmailers are traveling more, does that mean they use more gas?
I have been using Yahoo recently – not by choice but because it is used at my work. Yahoo has overwhelmingly huge amounts of ads, and commercial bells and whistles. I despise it. But that might be a factor – the simple additional bandwidth it requires to run all those stupid ads about the private lives of famous people (with lots of pictures) and all the rest of the fluff.
I’m curious if the study factored in “Server speed” of each system? If Yahoo takes longer to retrieve/manipulate mail than Google, each users’ computer would be running longer, thus using more electricity.
I use both Yahoo! mail and Gmail. I wonder where that leaves me, and whether Opower took that into consideration.
I wonder too. I have 6 different e-mail accounts used for various purposes–a yahoo & gmail among them. I’d like to see their survey…
I have a feeling that Yahoo mail users are older as a group because Yahoo mail predates gmail by a couple of years.
What about hotmail? I think that’s fairly popular.
As for me, my primary e-mail account is not with any of the majors. Yeah, I’m an outlier.
In this situation being an early-mover can leave you stranded with inefficient assets. ;-)
Opower says their analysis used the email address of the person who manages the electricity bill. I guess that in most cases that would be the primary personal email address.
It looks like a key difference is that Yahoo households were more likely to have children. That’s enough to raise your energy bills.
‘Travel’ was measured by the number of foreign countries visited.
Interesting…
I think no question yahoo users are more rural and small town and gmail users are more urban and sophisticated. Quite honestly, I’m surprised the difference isn’t greater. These are the kind of posts I like to see on the Thinkprogress board though. It’s interesting to know, and highlights the importance of education in reducing energy usage.
Yahoo mail has been around for more than 15 years. That means that people started using it when they were young in the 1990′s and now live in the suburbs. Gmail users are younger because it has not been around as long.
A better idea is that gmail will be seen as unhip in a decade and something else will have replaced it as the place for the “cool kids” to use.
An October 2011 Comscore report put Hotmail’s user base at 350 million, Yahoo! Mail at 310 million users, and GMail at 260 million users.
Yahoo users being older and less mobile may mean than their houses, possibly even apartments, are older than the G-Mail users quarters. Having worked on homes both older and newer it is clear to me that older homes are typically less energy efficient.
Newer homes are more air-tight, better insulated, and the heaters and air conditioning units are far more efficient.
The average EER for central AC units in the 70s was about 5. Today the average is 11 or 12. Even modern window units are now north of 10 for EER. Which is why turning off the old central unit and installing window units can often cut AC costs in half and do it for a few hundred dollars. Further saving can be had just cooling the bedroom, as opposed to the whole house, at night.
Heaters have seen similar progress.
And it isn’t just heating and cooling. Major appliances in older homes tend to be older and less efficient also.