Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic
A couple of years ago the German government funded a study to analyze the environmental impact (direct and indirect) of e-books and concluded that e-books are not as environmentally safe as some may suspect. In fact, the study claimed that e-books can cause significant indirect ecological damage through the required use of energy (for instance, when you use your PC to browse e-book catalogs, to download and transfer e-books, or when you use wireless for transfer (e.g. EVDO)).
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Well, that certainly says a lot for the use of tech like e-paper, that uses less-to-no energy to maintain a page. It also hints that if energy generation systems are improved (using solar, wind, tidal, thermal, etc) instead of traditional sources (oil and coal), the equation for e-books will significantly improve.
Alex, (since I don't speak German) did the study address the environmental impact of hardware e-book readers themselves, or did it divorce readers from the e-book question?