Green Powering a Google Search

As computers become a bigger part of our lives, information technology consumes an increasing amount of energy. IT technologies are responsible for 2% of the world’s CO2 emissions according to CIO insight. A 2003 study published by MIT estimated Internet usage responsible for 3% electricity consumption in the U.S. Because of the huge Internet usage growth rate (2008 Internet Usage Growth : 305.5 %) , electricity consumption of the Internet usage must double every year.

Google is the biggest player in the Internet search industry. There are 100 millions of Google search queries occur daily. This means a lot of job for Google datacenters. Data centers consumed 61 billion kilowatt- hours of power in 2006, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report last year to Congress. That’s 1.5 percent of all power consumed in the United States – at a cost of $4.5 billion. Moreover, some people don’t memorize website adresses and searches Google to reach what they want and  for these people, Google = Internet. Google strives to reduce the energy consumption of its datacenters and use clean sources of electricity.

Google’s five step plan to be a crabon neutral company:

1. Minimize electricity used by servers
2. Reduce the energy used by the data center facilities themselves
3. Conserve precious fresh water by using recycled water instead
4. Reuse or recycle all electronic equipment that leaves our data centers
5. Engage with our peers to advance smarter energy practices

This official blog post of Google tells the energy consumption of a Google search query.  In their own words:

• A typical search returns results in less than 0.2 seconds.
• An average search consumes 0.0003 kWh energy.
• One Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2.
• During the search, Your computer use more energy than Google uses to answer your query.

Google’s non-profit arm, Google.org invested $45 million in clean energy technologies. The world is changing and we need to take action to abolish the use of carbon based fuels. I think the abolition will be possible only when the number of giants like Google, which strive to use socially and enviromentally sustainable energy, increases. Sustainability is good, but it creates an economic advantage to Google, too: “Run the datacenters with a low energy bill”. A win-win situation…

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