13 January 2009

Google's green credentials thrown into debate

Did you know that two Google searches produce roughly the same amount of CO2 as boiling a kettle? With over 200 million searches per day, that's a lot of CO2 we're generating.

These figures are the findings of physicist Alex Wissner-Gross. Making headlines across the world, his research has caused quite a stir among environmentalists, technologists and everyone in between.

It is often cited that the IT industry is one of the least environmentally-friendly industries, generating the same amount of greenhouse emissions as the airline industry. While it is true that IT companies are overly energy-reliant, what about the benefits the IT industry has brought to the environment?

Consider e-mail for example. In times gone by, before e-mail that is, everything was sent by post. When you consider the trees used to make the paper and the distance travelled by aeroplanes and postal vans to deliver each letter, e-mail really doesn't look that bad.

Responding to claims that it isn't greener than green, Google noted in its blog that before search engines, researching a query meant driving to your local library. Surely a quick Google here and there is better than driving to your library to find the answer?

Not so green at business, Alex Wissner-Gross is also the founder of Enernetics and their website co2stats which charges companies for calculations on how eco-friendly their website is.

It's important to note that Google has always pushed green technology - remember the short lived Blackle initiative? - and is doing everything within its power to reduce its carbon footprint. In 2008 Google.org demonstrated this activism by investing $45million in clean energy technology.

Google is also a board member of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a green body which is working to halve power consumption by 2010, a feat comparable to taking 11 million cars off the road.

Two Google searches may well produce 15g of CO2, but how about the energy consumed as we all research the claims of Mr Wissner-Gross online? Thankfully his findings remind us of the individual impact we all have on the environment, but fail to recognise the achievement of companies making changes to improve this. Perhaps if we're really that concerned, we could just drink less tea?

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