Bitbucket webpage is down - on the sustainability of email

Since I started working in the corporate sector, an email chain has been exploding occasionally, usually for the least apparent reason. Yesterday, another one started, “The Bitbucket website is down.” “Meh,” I thought (especially since I’m working on Jira and Confluence) and don’t really care about Bitbucket. Joined another meeting and carried on with my day.

Only when I returned to my mailbox, did I see a familiar scheme? A number of emails from dissatisfied users (at least minimally technical ones) pasting “Please remove me from this list” right after hitting “Reply everyone” and including the group address. The more messages appeared the more people got annoyed and asked for removal from the list. Some tried to negotiate, explaining that the asks were counterproductive; others wrote how to self-unsubscribe from the list without success. This is the second day of the thread, and I have started to wonder how much it costs.

Going to money is tricky as users are across the planet and across the corporate grades, but I counted the emails.

Total Emails Processed = Emails Sent × Recipients Per Email

We have 78 emails, and the group list, according to Outlook, equals to 4186

Total Emails Processed = 78 × 4186 = 326,508 emails

💡so almost 2% of the users actively participated

Then, I needed to find some information on carbon footprint per email.

Total Emissions (grams) = Total Emails Processed × Emission Per Email

There is a number of resources (1,2, ) so I went with 0.3 gram Total Emissions (grams) = 326 508 × 0.3 = 97 952.4 grams of CO₂e Total Emissions (kg) = 97,95 kg of CO₂e

97 kg

I could stop here, but let’s translate this into something tangible.

How many battery charges would it be for our company devices?

# Conversion between CO₂ produced and energy
emissions_per_kWh = 0.43  # kg CO₂ per kWh (Source: Irish electricity mix)

# Energy equivalent of CO₂ emissions
energy_equivalent_kWh = total_emissions_kg / emissions_per_kWh

# Constants for electricity cost calculation in Ireland
energy_consumption_kWh = round(energy_equivalent_kWh, 2) # kWh
price_per_kWh = 0.3475  # EUR/kWh

# Constants for HP Laptop charging
total_energy_available_Wh = energy_consumption_kWh * 1000  # Convert kWh to Wh
hp_laptop_battery_capacity_Wh = 51  # Battery capacity in Wh
hp_laptop_charging_efficiency = 0.85  # 85% efficiency
hp_laptop_energy_per_charge_Wh = hp_laptop_battery_capacity_Wh / hp_laptop_charging_efficiency
hp_laptop_total_charges = total_energy_available_Wh / hp_laptop_energy_per_charge_Wh

# Constants for iPhone 14 charging
iphone_battery_capacity_mAh = 3279  # Battery capacity in mAh
iphone_battery_voltage = 3.7  # Voltage in volts
iphone_battery_capacity_Wh = (iphone_battery_capacity_mAh * iphone_battery_voltage) / 1000  # Convert to Wh
iphone_charging_efficiency = 0.85  # 85% efficiency
iphone_energy_per_charge_Wh = iphone_battery_capacity_Wh / iphone_charging_efficiency
iphone_total_charges = total_energy_available_Wh / iphone_energy_per_charge_Wh

The CO₂ emissions of 97.95 kg is equivalent to using 227.80 kWh of electricity.

Total HP Laptop charges with 227.8 kWh: 3 797 charges

Total iPhone 14 charges with 227.8 kWh: 15 960 charges

What makes total sense is to kill most of the email lists.