The blogosphere was burning up this week (har har), after the London Times reported that “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.”
The claim itself has been the subject of much dispute: the Times cited a researcher named Alexander Wissner-Gross, CTO at CO2Stats, who claims he’s been misquoted, at least slightly: his research never singled out Google in particular, and anyway, he doesn’t even drink tea.
What Wissner-Gross intended was to call attention to the amount of energy consumed by the data centers that power the Internet. “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.”
His company’s website goes on to frame the scale of this energy consumption: “Global carbon emissions due to information and communications technology are greater than those of the entire aviation industry. In fact, infotech as a whole contributes 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, and some expect it to grow to as much as 10% in the next decade.”
Google was understandably, um, steamed to have been singled out. They quickly explained why they felt the Times’ estimate 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.
Moreover, Google has devoted a significant share of its resources toward furthering a clean energy agenda. “I commend Google for its lobbying and the legislative work they’re doing when it comes to clean energy,” said Greenpeace’s Daniel Kessler on the blog TechNewsWorld. “In the whole tech sector, they’re really on the forefront on taking action regarding the climate.”
Finally, to help keep things in perspective, a Google blogger reminded everyone:
Not long ago, answering a query meant traveling to the reference desk of your local library. Today, search engines enable us to access immense quantities of useful information in an instant, without leaving home. Tools like email, online books and photos, and video chat all increase productivity while decreasing our reliance on car trips, pulp and paper.
Paper like, say, the London Times…?
Maybe we should all just cut back on tea…