Do The Green Thing: How many cups of tea does it take to power a Google search?

Yesterday's Sunday Times trumpeted "The environmental impact of Google searches". A fellow called Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard research fellow in fact, reckons his research proves that every two Google searches (7g of CO2 each) uses the same amount of energy as boiling the kettle for a cuppa (15g).

According to Urs Hölzle, their Senior Vice President of Operations on Google's blog yesterday, this figure is "many times too high".

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.

The bigger point is that technology does use huge amounts of energy and that this usage is growing rapidly. A recent McKinsey report concluded that while IT is definitely part of the problem, it's a bigger part of the solution.

IT today accounts for 2% of global CO2 emissions/yr (0.86 metric gigatons). Growth will hit 3% by 2020 - 1.54 metric gigatons, about twice what UK produces today as a nation. But total potential savings from IT-related improvements in energy productivity in areas like buildings, power, transport and manufacturing could equal annual savings of 7-8 metric gigatons/year by 2020. And this doesn't include every area potentially impacted - e.g. things like satellite surveillance to monitor deforestation and herding.

It would be an interesting experiment in England to see which people could live longest without: cups of tea or Google searches. I don't think we'd be able to do without either. What's more I think we'll need plenty of cuppas and computers to help us re-invent a new kind of sustainable society and globalised economy, where kettles and data centres are powered by renewable energy and there's plenty of tea and Google for all.

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In: energy, kettle, search, technology, google, mckinsey

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2 comments

As the owner and author of The Green Market (http://thegreenmarket.blogspot.com). I want to thank you for your novel efforts promoting Green in 2008 and I would like to support your ongoing efforts for 2009. As the economy is in a free fall, Green is entering a critical stage in its life cycle and now more than ever bloggers need to disseminate the facts about our environment and the role we can play in addressing these complex issues (particularly when it can be done with the fun factor found at "Do the Green Thing". Please consider adding my link to your blogroll. Best Regards, SBC

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sbc about 1 year ago.

Until we can find a way to do this technically...here's some comments on this post on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/inbox/readmessage.php?t=1010366264508#/profile.php?id=572312020&ref=profile) Daniel Julian Green at 9:50am January 12 probably the same as adding a facebook comment ....oops Daniel Julian Green at 9:53am January 12 at the risk of adding another 0.000000000000000000001% to the world's CO2 levels, Google says the report is wrong http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/245215/google-boiling-kettle-claims-are-hot-air.html Matt Prescott at 10:02am January 12 The truth would be easy to determine if Google published its electricity consumption (by region) and the total number of searches undertaken within each region. A search could, in my opinion, use an amount of electricity equivalent to a kettle (or even several kettles) for the duration of a search (i.e. for fractions of second) so the real ... Read Moreamount of electricity used per search comes down to the wattage of each computer searched, the duration of each search and the number of servers competing to provide answers. It is almost certainly the case that Google's searches are optimised for speed rather than energy efficiency, so this analysis is useful and shines a totally valid spotlight on Google's hidden energy costs. Daniel Julian Green at 10:12am January 12 To assess the real climate impact, you'd have to take into account what the Google searcher would otherwise have done. 1) In a small number of cases, they'd have got into their car and driven to the library to find out something. 2) Or bought a book. Are sales of reference books what they used to be? I haven't bought a dictionary or encyclopedia this century. etc etc

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andyh about 1 year ago.

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