What’s the carbon footprint of the information economy?

A recent Times Online article estimates the energy required to perform two searches on Google at nearly what it takes to boil your average teapot.

TechCrunch and The Register both do a fine job of pulling apart the British physicist’s original call to action. Compared to the carbon consumed in publishing books, Google comes out the green alternative.

It looks like Google has actually responded to the original story! They say that it takes far less energy to perform a search than what the physicist cited. He probably forgot to figure in the active solar cells Google put on the roof of their corporate campus.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 6:43 pm and is filed under 01-Jan 12, 2009, 2009 shows, Main Story, Weather or Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “What’s the carbon footprint of the information economy?”

Justin says:

January 18, 2009 at 4:29 pm

Revealed: The Times of London made up all that stuff about Google and tea kettles
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/12/revealed-the-times-made-up-that-stuff-about-google-and-the-tea-kettles/