A recent article in The Conversation, written by Joshua M. Pearce and titled, “Email signatures are harming the planet and could cost people their lives — it’s time to stop using them,” makes a bold claim; email signatures are supposedly harming the environment and even “costing lives” due to their energy consumption. [emphasis, links added]
The claim is not just false and exaggerated—it’s outright ridiculous.
A deeper look at the actual energy usage of emails, the infrastructure of the Internet, and the overwhelming impact of spam emails show that the supposed climate harm from email signatures is trivial at best.
In the article, the author states, “It is estimated that the average email, including all those ‘kind regards’ and corporate disclaimers, releases 4g of CO2 emissions.”
This kind of claim is a prime example of misrepresenting numbers without context.
The Internet’s backbone—email servers, data centers, and routing infrastructure—runs 24/7/365 regardless of how many emails are sent.
Email servers are never turned off; they consume energy continuously, whether processing a single email or millions. The additional power drawn from an extra email, let alone a signature, is marginal.
If we’re genuinely concerned about email-related energy consumption, the focus should be on spam, not email signatures.
Studies estimate that spam emails account for over 85% of all email traffic. According to a 2021 Cisco report, spam emails make up around 122 billion of the 144 billion emails sent daily.
That means legitimate emails—including those with signatures—are a tiny fraction of the overall email traffic.
Furthermore, a study from McAfee estimated that spam emails alone are responsible for 33 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity annually, equivalent to the emissions of over 3.1 million cars.
By comparison, regular email traffic, including signatures, contributes a fraction of that energy usage.
If reducing email emissions was truly a priority, tackling spam filtering inefficiencies would be a far more effective approach than eliminating polite email sign-offs.
How much energy do email signatures actually use? Let’s put the facts in perspective:
- The total energy consumption of all emails (legitimate and spam) is estimated to be around 100 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year.
- Spam emails contribute over 33% of that energy use (McAfee, 2009).
- Email signatures, consisting of a few extra kilobytes of text and logos, represent a fraction of a fraction of total email data traffic.
If a single email emits 4g of CO2 and a typical corporate email signature is just a few extra kilobytes, the additional energy impact is negligible—perhaps a few hundredths of a gram of CO2 per email.
In other words, a single minute of streaming video or a Google search likely uses orders of magnitude more energy than all the email signatures you send in a year.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) data centers—especially large-scale training models like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and DeepMind—are far more energy-intensive than regular Internet operations.
Estimates suggest AI-related computing could account for 10-15% of total data center energy use, meaning AI workloads consumed ~50-70 TWh in 2022.
That’s roughly equal to the electricity consumption of a medium-sized country like Sweden or Argentina.
As AI adoption increases, projections suggest AI computing could consume over 200 TWh by 2030—approaching 5-6% of global electricity use.
Data centers in general are expected to consume more than 1,000 TWh annually by 2030 (about as much as Japan’s entire energy consumption today).
Yet, Joshua M. Pearce at The Conversation is worried about trivial email signatures effect on the planet and people’s lives.
This article is yet another example of climate alarmism distorting reality to make everyday activities seem harmful. It is nothing more than a manufactured crisis to push “climate guilt.”
Instead of acknowledging real issues—such as energy-intensive AI data processing, inefficient spam filtering, or the environmental cost of manufacturing electronic devices—this piece pushes an absurd notion that typing “Best regards” in an email is somehow costing human lives.
The real problem here isn’t email signatures—it’s misleading journalism that cherry-picks numbers without context. If The Conversation truly cared about accuracy, they would focus on actual contributors to energy waste rather than fabricating another climate scare story.
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