The Official Google Blog has just a published a brief explanation of the company’s environmental footprint. Saying that, contrary to the recent report, one Google search does not produce that high amount of CO2 (0.7 grams), but only 0.2 grams.
To prove that the company has enviromental programs aimed at protecting the environment, the post explained that Google is a fast search engine and it takes only 0.2 seconds to return search results and compared Google search’s energy consumption to the amount of energy that a body burns in ten seconds. It also reiterated that Google’s data centers are energy efficient and the energy produced when doing search in Google produces a very minimal amount of energy.
In fact, Google was so into the welfare of the environment that it invested $45 million in clean energy technologies in 2008 through the Google.org. In addition, Google has also established the Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal Initiative (RE<C) which was tasked to explore clean energy and the Climate Savers Computing Initiate which pushes efficient computing and aimed at cutting energy consumption of computers by half in 2010.
We got to give credit to Google for issuing an official statement such as this one despite the fact that it can choose to simply ignore the research finding made by Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross. I bet Mr. Wissner-Gross would be more glad if he does not receive any communication or reaction from Google. That way, CO2 would not be produced and the environment will not be affected.