The rise of the internet economy is a rapidly shifting business activity from stores and highways into data centres.
As data centre infrastructures become a major focal point of the global economy the amount of electricity they consume increases exponentially.
Google in particular have been more open about their power usage than they were traditionally and this is thought to be response to Greenpeace, who called for increased disclosure of DC efficiencies.
In fact Google have released impressive statistics which demonstrate how their server farms are five times less resource hungry than typical data centres. They are leading the way and have set the bar high for other companies to follow.
Furthermore Google have revealed a five step plan outlining exactly how they wish to achieve minimal impact on the planet’s resources. The plan includes minimising the amount of electricity required by servers, their housing facilities and also outlines Google’s policy on e-waste recycling and water conservation. Google has for some time led the way in remaining carbon neutral and has invested heavily in all these aspects in addition to putting much money into renewable energy sources.
In total Google only consumed 2.2 million megawatt hours of electricity to run operations in 2010. This would generate a relatively modest carbon footprint of 1.46 million metric tons of Carbon Dioxide.
Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure at Google had this to say: “to provide you with Google products for a month not just search but Google+, Gmail, Youtube and everything else we have to offer – our servers use less energy per user than a light left on for three hours. And, because we’ve been a carbon neutral company since 2007, even that small amount of energy is offset completely, so the carbon footprint of your lifetime is zero.”
