Google.org Investing Into Cleaner Energy
Posted at 9:13am EST on 01/12/2009
Google.com powers millions upon millions of search queries everyday, even on the weekends [these Google servers never take a break.] There has been quite a bit of buzz lately about how using Google has a larger impact than you may think it does. There are a number of reputable sources talking about the story; Search Engine Journal, CNET News, even Telegraph. So what’s all the latest hype about?
Over the weekend, Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President of Operations at Google, cleared a few things up.
In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2. The current EU standard for tailpipe emissions calls for 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven, but most cars don’t reach that level yet. Thus, the average car driven for one kilometer (0.6 miles for those of in the U.S.) produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches.
We’ve made great strides to reduce the energy used by our data centers, but we still want clean and affordable sources of electricity for the power that we do use. In 2008 our philanthropic arm, Google.org, invested $45 million in breakthrough clean energy technologies. And last summer, as part of our Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative, we created an internal engineering group dedicated to exploring clean energy.
Google already has extremely energy efficient data centers, but there’s still more work to do.
0.2 grams of CO2 per search is still a lot of CO2 being used. I run 20-40 queries on Google per day, which turns into anywhere between 4 and 8 grams of CO2 for me alone. Multiple that by the millions of queries per day and that turns into millions upon millions of grams of CO2 being released each day.
Google has already started making small changes in an effort to make them greener, but it will just need to continue to make them even more efficient. Google is rumored to be creating a Google Router, coming a little over 6 months after announcing that they would be switching to Solid State Drives.
