Future Tense: How much juice does it take to power the 'Net?

On Friday's Future Tense (RealAudio - MP3 - iTunes), I talked with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist Jonathan Koomey about power consumption by the servers and data centers that make the Internet what it is.

According to a new study the data centers that make the Internet go use about 45 billion kilowatt hours per year. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says that's equivalent to the amount of power used by the state of Mississippi in 2005. That sounds like a lot, but it's really much less than what some people have claimed.