Google's Carbon Footprint

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet on January 11, 2009 at 2:10 pm

How much CO2 does a google search produce if a google search produces CO2? Well, Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross did the math:

… a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”

Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines – about 2% of global CO2 emissions. “Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power.

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Negative CO2 Emitting Cement

Posted by Jill Harness in Everything Else, Science & Tech on January 1, 2009 at 4:50 pm

People love to overlook certain things that pollute, just because we don’t have an alternative yet. We never talk about the emissions caused from cement, which produces more carbon dioxide than the entire aviation industry. Did you know that 5% of all CO2 production comes from cement?

There is finally an alternative. The British engineering firm, Novacem, has created a new cement that uses magnesium silicates, which emit no carbon dioxide when they are heated. As the cement hardens, it absorbs CO2. In all, it removes about .6 tons of carbon dioxide per ton of cement used.

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