There can’t be many web users who haven’t, at some time or other, run a search on Google. And we’re all familiar with Google’s laid back new age image and corporate philosophy (even if certain aspects have already had to adapt to commercial reality). So it was to be expected that sooner or later Green researchers would want to take a closer look at Google’s environmental credentials.
A study by Alex Wissner-Gross of Harvard, calculating that launching a search on Google produces 7g of CO2, drew a lot of attention recently. The carbon footprint was said to be equivalent to half that produced by boiling a kettle of water.
According to Google these figures hugely overestimate the environmental impact of a web search. A search request, says Google, generates just 0.2g of CO2, for 0.0003kWh of electrical consumption. Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President — Operations at Google describes this as being the equivalent of the energy burnt by the average human body every 10 seconds.
Wissner-Gross subsequently clarified his postion, saying his article had been misinterpreted. It was not meant as an attack on Google’s green credentials, but was intended to calculate the carbon footprint of overall web usage. Visiting a traditional web site, he says, generates 20g of CO2 every second.
Confused? Beyond the question of whether your web usage is better compared to boiling kettles or car exhaust emissions, there’s a more serious message for the IT industry and its users. Analysts at Gartner have estimated that information and communications technologies are responsable for nearly 2% of global CO2 emissions — equivalent to the aviation industry. The issue, says Gartner, is no longer about whether the enterprise needs to care, and more about the risk associated with doing nothing.
