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Karl Burkart

The carbon impact of googling

A recent report puts the number at 3.5 g CO2 per search, but some experts are not so sure.

Tue, Jan 13 2009 at 10:20 PM EST

Photo: AP
The blogs are ablaze. That bastion of liberalness and social progress, Google, has been indicted with a carbon crime -- two google searches alone are responsible for the emission of 7g of CO2, "enough to boil a kettle of water." Google, a company that has invested millions in solar technology, promptly rebutted the claim, saying that a search represents a tiny fraction of that amount.  But in typical Google fashion, they will not release the stats. So we are left to wonder. 
 
One of my favorite carbon bloggers in the UK, Leo Hickman, did some number crunching and is skeptical. He also points out that Alex Wissner-Gross, the man behind the 7g figure is the co-founder of CO2Stats.com, a company which sells carbon credits to internet companies to offset their carbon footprint. Little conflict of interest, no?  If anything, Hickman states, CO2Stats.com should be congratulated for a fabulous PR campaign that raises an important fact -- information technology consumes a great deal of energy and is responsible for an estimated 2-3% of global carbon emissions.
 
Here's the back of the envelope math:
* approximately 500 million google searches every day (estimates vary)
* x 3.5 g per search = 1.75 trillion grams / 1 million grams per ton = 
* 1,750 tonnes per day x 365 = 638,000 CO2 tonnes per year
 
And thats just for searching.  It seems safe to assume that Google uses an equal portion of its servers for its hundreds of other projects -- phones, software, advertising services, webware, apps and on and on. So lets double that number to 1.3 million tonnes/year. That's more than many countries. But it is still certainly within the realm of reason.

 

As Alex Wissner-Gross describes below, his numbers are based on energy consumption for a typical website -- 20 mg of CO2 per second. Google, with their sophisticated server network, claims to be significantly less. But one great thing about this factoid, accurate or not, is that it makes us think about how many of our impacts on the environment remain totally invisible to us.  

 

 

A new division of cleantech has recently emerged, called "Green IT," to address the growing energy demands of internet and IT infrastructure. Many new technological advances are being made that can save up to 80% on server loads. In the meantime though, I encourage everyone to use Blackle an all-black, energy saving version of Google. The creators theorize that an all black version of Google would save 750,000 kWh's of energy per year. 

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anonymous
Melinda Leo Hall 06/14/2009 06:17 AM

I wonder if any of my other human friends have considered the environmental impact of their computer activities! I wonder if it will alter them any?! why am I so doubtful? because I'm reluctant to change my habit of sometimes leaving my computer powered up overnight to save me the time of starting all the features up again in the morning?

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