= Data Power Cost =

Transmitted data is the most expensive form of energy.  The highest cost "bits" are probably those gathered by spysats; the world spends hundreds of billions of dollars to learn what adversaries are doing.  

On the retail level, the most widely consumed expensive bits are cell phone data.  According to [[ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-of-mobile-data-worldwide/ | this 2020 graphic ]], a gigabyte of cell data ranges from $16 in Yemen to $0.09 in India (while loss-leader competition lasts).  In the United States, it is $8/gigabyte, or $1 per gigabit.  

At a temperature of 300 Kelvins and 100% Shannon energy efficiency, the energy cost of a bit is ln(2) kT, or 18 millielectron volts, or 3e-21 joules.  By this (absurdly efficient) measure, a gigabit is 2.9e-12 joules, or 8e-19 kilowatt hours.  Hence the energy cost of perfectly delivered data is 8e-19 kilowatts per dollar, or 1.2e18 dollars per kilowatt hour.