Research Reveals Environmental Impact of Google Searches

[AlaskaDenise]

All FT readers must be very guilty here...
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Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g.

?Google operates huge data centers around the world that consume a great deal of power,? said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. ?A Google search has a definite environmental impact.?

Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centers. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world?s airlines - about 2% of global CO2 emissions.

?Data centers are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,? said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of Web pages require power.

Though Google says it is in the forefront of green computing, its search engine generates high levels of CO2 because of the way it operates. When you type in a Google search for, say, ?energy saving tips," your request doesn?t go to just one server. It goes to several competing against each other.

It may even be sent to servers thousands of miles apart. Google?s infrastructure sends you data from whichever produces the answer fastest. The system minimizes delays but raises energy consumption.

Google has servers in the U.S., Europe, Japan and China.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479127,00.html

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Research Reveals Environmental Impact of Google Searches

Scientist slams newspaper for Google CO2 report

A report in The Times of London on Sunday generated a firestorm when Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross was identified as saying a typical Google Web search on a desktop computer generates about 7 grams of carbon dioxide, making two searches comparable to bringing a tea kettle to boil.

"A Google search has a definite environmental impact," Wissner-Gross was quoted as telling the newspaper.

Problem is, Wissner-Gross tells TechNewsWorld, his study never singles out or even mentions Google.

"For some reason, in their story on the study, The Times had an ax to grind with Google," Wissner-Gross said. "Our work has nothing to do with Google. Our focus was exclusively on the Web overall, and we found that it takes on average about 20 milligrams of CO2 per second to visit a Web site."

So where did The Times get the kettle stat?

"I have no idea where they got those statistics," said Wissner-Gross, who acknowledged and defended making the statements about Google. "Everything online has a definite environmental impact. I think everybody can agree on that, including Google."

Google, which the newspaper described as "secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint," was swift to respond to the reported statistics in a blog late Sunday:


We thought it would be helpful to explain why this number is *many* times too high. Google is fast--a typical search returns results in less than 0.2 seconds. Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. Together with other work performed before your search even starts (such as building the search index) this amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ. For comparison, the average adult needs about 8000 kJ a day of energy from food, so a Google search uses just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds.

As my report noted Sunday, Google has become a de facto leader in the effort to reduce energy consumption not only in IT but in the general population.


Google is a board member of a new coalition called the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which aims to reduce computing power-consumption by half by 2010. And the search giant's Google.org philanthropy has made policy recommendations on how the U.S. could wean itself from coal and oil for electricity generation and nearly halve its gasoline consumption by 2030.

While Wissner-Gross criticized The Times for finding a "really easy way to sell papers," the physicist is riding a tsunami of press inquiries to highlight CO2stats.com, a site he manages to help educate people about energy efficiencies on the Internet.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10141432-54.html