LONDON: Internet users got their ethernet cables in a twist this week when they learned that just two Google searches could emit as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as boiling enough water for a cup of tea. A Harvard physicist, Alex Wissner-Gross, was reported as saying he had calculated that each search produced seven grams of CO2, due to the huge number of energy-hungry servers and data centres used by the internet giant. It might not sound a lot, but when you consider that more than 200m Google searches are made every day it soon adds up. Over a year, it broadly compares to the output of a nation such as Laos.

Many suspected the figure was wildly overcooked and Google itself responded by releasing its own calculations that put the carbon footprint of a search query at 0.2g of CO2. The search firm stated that the energy needed for each search averaged at 0.0003 kWh, or 1 kilojoule, which is about the same as the average adult body burns in 10 seconds. The plot thickened when Wissner-Gross claimed he never used the kettle comparison, but he still failed to explain the discrepancy other than to say his research will be published soon. However, the story helped to shine a light on the wider issue of how much energy our computing consumes – and how we might reduce the resulting, ever-growing, emissions.

In 1965, when computers needed reinforced concrete foundations to support their weight, the founder of Intel, Gordon E. Moore, famously observed that the processing power of computers was doubling every two years. Moore’s Law, as it is known, has remained more or less constant over the last four decades.

This has proved a boon for those wanting, say, ever more complex computer games, or to maintain huge databases, but it has become a headache for those trying to minimise the amount of power used by computers. Compounding the problem, the more processing your computer does, the hotter it gets and the more cooling is required, thereby adding an extra energy burden. The same is true of games consoles. When the PlayStation 2 was released in 2000 it ran on 45W. By 2005, the PlayStation 3 was guzzling 380W.

There is now an urgent search under way by the computer industry to find ways to reduce power consumption and, in particular, to cool processors efficiently. “There is a sudden race to be green,” says Preston Gralla, editor of GreenerComputing.com. “Manufacturers are looking at the whole life cycle of their hardware to find savings, not just in energy consumption, but in the overall use of resources such as packaging and toxic materials. Unlike, say, the auto industry, this is a sector that historically has responded very quickly to new challenges.” Gralla points out that Apple and Dell are “fighting to out-green each other,” by reducing packaging, increasing recycling facilities and improving power management on their computers. Microsoft has introduced power management improvements to its new Windows 7 operating system.

An increasingly common practice is to outsource data storage. Rather than keep all your data on a hard drive under your desk or on your lap, many people are using faster broadband speeds to store data on a secure server, sometimes thousands of miles away. This has been common in the corporate sector for years, but now home users are starting to rely on it, too. It allows us to use smaller, far less energy-hungry machines – such as increasingly popular netbooks – to access these stored items using an internet connection.

David Thompson, who runs Tranquil PC, a Manchester, England-based computer company that manufactures and sells about 25,000 low-energy machines each year, says that, whereas the typical home computer requires 120-150W (printers, screens and Wi-Fi routers all require extra), a Tranquil PC machine needs just 20W and therefore can use its recycled aluminium casing to dissipate heat rather than using a fan.

“The devices we all now have in our homes are far more powerful than is really necessary,” he says. “The era of ‘bigger, better, faster’ computing is now over, I believe.”

All this helps to reduce energy use in the home, but it also requires huge data centres to be built and maintained elsewhere. Are we, as Wissner-Gross is trying to illustrate with his Google search statistic, now just outsourcing our energy use and emissions, too? There is certainly genuine concern about the energy implications of relying on data centres – collections of cabinet-mounted servers that often take up an entire dedicated building. According to the British government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, data centres now account for three per cent of the world’s electricity use, a figure predicted to double by 2020. Last November, Lord Hunt, minister for sustainable development and energy innovation, called on the computer industry to adopt the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres, which demands increased energy savings, in part, through the use of “natural cooling” and more energy efficient servers.

Google, one of the world’s largest users of data centres, announced last year that it had applied for the patent on “floating data centres”, which would be tethered off coasts near large cities. The intention is to use wave power to generate the electricity to run the data centres, and to use sea water to help keep them cool. Meanwhile, Iceland – economic woes notwithstanding – intends to position itself as one of the world’s key data centre hubs by utilising its cold climate and abundant geothermal energy.

We need such solutions fast, though: June 2008 marked the passing of the symbolic “one billion computers in use” landmark, according to market analysts Gartner. With computer use growing at 13 per cent annually, it predicts the two-billion mark to be reached by 2014.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service