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Web site advertisements viewed by the Dutch consume as much energy as two thousand households in the Netherlands, concludes Randy Simons of the University of Twente.

He connected a power meter on his computer and used a special program to disable the many web adverts on the internet. This way he could compare how much power is consumed when he let the ads load and how much power is consumed when he blocks them.

He concluded that on average two and a half watts per hour are consumed by web adverts. Previous research showed that all Dutch people surf 2.7 billion hours a year. By dividing those numbers he calculatedthat Web site advertisements consume as much electricity as two thousand households.