Measuring your Google search's carbon footprint

Updated at 12:20 a.m PST January 12 to include Google comment.

Worried about the carbon footprint of your Google searches?

A Harvard University physicist says a typical search on a desktop computer generates about 7 grams of carbon dioxide. Thus, performing two searches is comparable to bringing a kettle to boil, according to a report Sunday in The Times of London. While that may not sound like a lot, the report notes that Google handles about 200 million searches daily.

"Google operates huge data centers around the world that consume a great deal of power," Alex Wissner-Gross told the newspaper. "A Google search has a definite environmental impact."

The global IT industry generates about 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, or about as much greenhouse gas as the world's airlines, according to a recent Gartner study cited by the newspaper.

Google disputed that report late Sunday evening, saying in a blog that the "time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than Google uses to answer your query." The blog also noted:

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.

The search giant has actively campaigned to reduce the amount of energy consumed by the IT industry.

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. It will do that largely by encouraging member companies like Google to turn off computers when they're not in use. The coalition says that reaching that goal would be the equivalent of taking 11 million cars off the road.

The search giant's Google.org philanthropy released numbers and policy recommendations in November regarding how the U.S. could wean itself from coal and oil for electricity generation and nearly halve its gasoline consumption by 2030.

Google first introduced its 2030 energy road map in the fall. And CEO Eric Schmidt, an adviser to President-elect Barack Obama, called on the federal government to show more leadership on climate change by fostering clean-technology businesses.

Schmidt told the Corporate EcoForum last year that the company's plan is to reduce global demand for oil and to help generate new white- and blue-collar jobs by investing in solar, wind, and geothermal energy projects.

[kenpm]

How unbelievably stupid. "Measuring your Google search's carbon footprint" almost sounds like an Onion article. Does that 7 grams include the carbon dioxide that my lungs exhale while executing the google search? That said, reducing power consumption is a good and useful thing. Calculating the carbon footprint of a google search is not.

[loose_screw]

Let's sterilize humanity and earth's environmental problems will be solved!

Next?

[jlm429]

gandhi to google - "we must be the change we wish to see in the world"

[lkrupp]

Face it. These bozos won't be happy until three-fourths of us are dead and the rest are back living in caves gathering twigs and berries to survive. Only then will they be satisfied that mother earth is safe from the cancer that is humanity.

[SJ2571]

+1

So sick of this whole global warming BS.

[Iria00]

To be honest, that's what's likely to happen. The earth cannot sustain the number of people if already has, and we're supposed to reach 9 billion by 2050. Any scientist will tell you that the reason our population has skyrocketed in the last century is because of the easy energy provided by oil.

Once's that's gone (whether it's completely gone or gone in terms of EASY ACCESS to it), there's going to be a lot of starvation. Remember, fertilizer, comes from oil. Antibiotics? Try making that without easy energy. Plastic: oil.

Think a little before making snap judgments. It took me decades to change my mind. I once thought as you.

[troyrader]

I guess that the recent news will take decades to changes minds again, or can people start to see the "global change" initiatives for what they are? Tax and control. Does recent news that we have cooled in the past few years, to the point of "wiping out 100 years of warming", or do articles like this, mean anything, or do you just think this is part of a vast right wing conspiracy to twist the truth? http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=13834 I would think that global warming (now called global climate change since we have cooled) people would be thrilled that the warming has stopped, been erased, and the sea ice is back to 1979 levels. Why are they not thrilled? What can we assume when they still worry and spread panic about "global climate change"? Do they honestly assume that the globe stays the precise temperature all the time??? And, the earth can sustain many more people. Corrupt governments have prevented their people from receiving food sent by wealthy countries. We can feed the world now, and in the future, if corrupt governments would get out of the way. Lastly, a few people with good intentions, have gone into developing countries and convinced them to do things the "all natural" way. Farming, etc. This doesn't scale. So people starve and die because a few people would like to spread their "save the earth" agenda, that doesn't work. I say, save the people. Save common sense.

[battlefella]

"the sea ice is back to 1979 levels." LOL And what planet are you living on? that statement is particularly amusing since it is so easily proven wrong. This past year commercial cargo ships actually used the Northwest passage.

"These bozos won't be happy until three-fourths of us are dead and the rest are back living in caves gathering twigs and berries to survive." Sadly, that's also the same time when others will realize that they should have done something earlier.

[troyrader]

You completely make my point. When RECENT news comes in, people who WANT to believe in the global climate change, or global warming, or whatever, refuse to see the latest information since it does not further their cause. If I believed that man was contributing to global warming, and that warming was bad, and that it would continue, I'd be for "saving the planet", but it's all bunk. Similar to the 70's when the fear was actually globally cooling, and the need to coat the ice caps with pitch and tar to "save the planet". Here is the article that references the level of sea ice. Please read it. Comment again or not. But please read it. http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=13834

[troyrader]

Just saw another article. There is more and more information like this, so why can't we have an honest conversation about this? http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090112/sc_afp/denmarkresearchclimategeology_newsmlmmd

[troyrader]

And another. http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=b84196ff-802a-23ad-4827-17b10ab7dfcc

[loose_screw]

What about Yahoo or Live?

[CalicoSilk]

To keep things in perspective, how much power does it save? how much more carbon dioxide would be released without it? With out Google, many times, I would have to drive somewhere to buy printed information. I would have to keep volumes of information in the form of newspapers, encyclopedias, Address cards, maps, phone books, atlas', dictionaries, magazines, etc. I may even have to fly to far away places to get the needed information. Not only is there a savings from driving and other commutes but also on trees form all the printed material, not to mention the wood, plastic, and space it takes to keep all these things handy.
After those numbers are crunched then it's time to talk.

[joyousjam1]

Back in the 1980s and '90s I used to fly most years to the UK or the USA for my research, there taking buses and subways/underground to get to libraries and archives, and the rest of the time I drove to the University and National libraries here in Kingston, Jamaica, everywhere toiling over books and micro-film readers. Now I am retired I have become very lazy, because every day, using my laptop, I can access ever-increasing amounts of the material for my research online, especially using Google's services. Can someone do the sums and tell me if I am contributing more to climate change now than I did in previous decades?

[larryleobig]

The point is - technology uses a massive amount of energy - it's not free and the cost to our environment may make you uncomfortable - however it is real. The technology community depends on electricity to function and the cost will keep rising.

[freemarket--2008]

What cost? Google has been very good about reducing it's power requirements per server and moving to sustainable energy. Others will need to do so as well.

[Wookiee-1138]

I'm curious...
And are the competitors like Live Search substantially better?

[David Gerard]

@Wookiee-1138 - yes, using Windows Live Search - to be renamed Windows Love Search - produces butterflies and kittens. If you search using Google you may as well be strangling kittens. Use a trustworthy company of impeccable moral values, like Microsoft.

[gggg sssss]

Alex Wissner-Gross should consider doing the world a favour by holding his own breath - forever. Leave teh amount of CO2 room available he is wasteing by breathing an dspouting such government funded bullcr*p for someone who actually does some good for the world.

[guytaur1]

Check out the company of Alex Wissner Goss. He has caught a lot of media with this. The study has not been released yet. Alex Wissner Goss has a financial motive with the company he owns doing carbon offsets for searches.

[ecotopian--2008]

The solution isn't to stop Googling. The solution is to generate electricity by cleaner means. If all the trillions wasted on war were directed at solving our real problems, we'd have peace and plenty of bandwidth.

[carbonfootprintbs]

Ok guys. Get ready. The really smart people at Harvard have devised a way to tax you on your carbon footprint. They have an algorithm for all of us minions. I know what you're saying "no way!"
They will find any and every way to tax you in the near future.
Give it two years. The future sucks.

[shajahanali21]

Harvard University is a business school and so in my opinion they should not be given any opnions on Technology or Google in this instance. These guys at Harvard who devised this experiment should be made public and let the public make the judgements. I have been reading and hearing about global warming for the past 8 years and I have my doubts.

70% of the world is water so we are left with 30% from which I believe about may be less than 20% habitable, we have the mountains, the ice caps and deserts.

Now, any intelligent personwho has a common sense should think how can we cause warming to the planet on a global scale. I thought Harvard was supposed to be one of the best (oh yeah in Business).

Also, why is it that there are a lot of Scientists who are against global warming my question is Why?
Surely, they are not incompetent then why would they take a different view on this issue.

Google has changed our lives immensely and helped small business flourish and connected the world via their search and technological revolution. They provid services to 80% of the world's Internet users that I think is commendable in every way.

Google are investing in new technologies both in the green and renewable energy, now that I feel is a credit to Google's establishments in our lives.

Scientist's once thought the world was flat, atom was the smalled object, only nine planets in our solar systems and that time was same no matter where ever you are in the universe. These so called scientist's were totally wrong and didn't have the common sense to say that they could be proven wrong".

Let Google do their job, you guys at Harvard should stick to their 9-5 jobs and let Google provide an excellent service which they are providing to the world.

No one in the world can say to me that global warming in the world is a direct result of human beings. "No one", an average human only use around 3-5% of the brain, so I doubt that any would be able to explain with tangible facts.

In conclusion, we should not see this as a global warming but as a global WAR ming to balance the world's resources, i.e. population and resources. I am developing a website where I will discussing and debating a new approach to help sustain our existence on this planet. I will post the sitename here in the coming days.

Not find new way of generating money through green tax and other means.

Happy New Year to all.

[aMUSICsite]

They have this totally the wrong way round.

The formula is quite simple.

(Total power usage of Google server farms) + (Carbon costs of replacing broken servers) / Total number of searches.

And I'm with Google, I bet the average user with their cheap inefficient PC probably uses more power while they are typing the search in that their % share of Googles carbon footprint.

[carbonfootprintbs]

Once again, Harvard has completely fabricated their pompous study. We all know what the elite are trying to do. The gig is up. It's not going to work. You all should know what is really causing the heat in the ionosphere and the atmosphere around most of the world. It is unnatural. Do you have any idea how much heat we are getting blasted with. Absolutely nothing to do with your carbon footprint. If you believe that, you are an idiot. Do your homework. It's all about chem-trails and unnatural earthquakes that come from the sky not the ground. All the experts are purposely lying to you idiots. My government would never lie to me. They think that you are inferior, with a low iq. They thing that you are not worthy to be part of the elite.

[gdmaclew]

And every time I fart, I raise the temperature of the earth.
What total garbage the Global Warming farce is.
Oh, excuse me...Climate Change.

[austinite01]

How inane! I think we are getting a little hyper-ventilated over global warming and carbon footprints. What's next...An iPhone app to calculate the impending carbon footprint of your most recent meal?

[aktrader2]

What is the carbon footprint of this research? How many trees had to die to produce it?

[jawaidbazyar]

Even if the number is true, it should properly be compared to the amount of CO2 emitted by NOT using Google - i.e. by performing the same information lookup an old-fashioned way, such as driving to the library.

That's assuming you haven't noticed that global temperatures have actually fallen this decade, and aren't bothered by the inconsistencies in the "CO2 causes global warming" literature.

[bjhagen2001]

I think Harvard has made a major miscalculation here. Harvard says it takes the energy of "bringing a kettle to boil" for 2 searches. This would be a minimum of 178 KJ of energy. (Asssume raising 500 cc of water from 15 degC to 100 degC = 85*500 cal = 42.5 kcal or 178 KJ or 0.05 KWH). Thus Harvard's estimate of energy is about 90 times greater than Google's. (Google says 2 KJ for 2 searches.) Using Harvard's estimate would mean that the electrical cost of 200 million searches would be about $500,000 per day or $182 million per year. (Assume $0.10/KWH, 200 million searches/day, 0.05 KWH/two searches). Using Google's estimate yields $5500/day in electrical usage. I think that Harvard has way over estimated Google's energy usage.

[mikesgcfl]

Whether the earth is getting warmer or cooler, is not the question. The real question is what is the correct temperature for the earth? We have been on the earth a minuscule amount of time as compared with the life of the earth and we have been scientifically recording information for far less than that. Even the method of how information is secured and interpreted has its proponents and detractors.