Better web.
Better for the environment.
At Google, we've worked hard to minimize the environmental impact of our services. In fact, to provide you with Google products for a month, our servers use less energy per user than leaving a light on for 3 hours. If you add in our renewable energy and offsets, our footprint is zero. And we continue to find new ways to reduce our impact even further. Learn more about our efforts below
By the numbers
Our carbon footprint & electricity consumption: 2010
The numbers above represent Google's carbon footprint for 2010 before we offset our emissions. We generated a total of 1.46 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. Without efficiency measures in our data centers our footprint would have been about twice as big. By purchasing and generating renewable energy, as well as buying high-quality carbon offsets, we bring our carbon impact to zero. Google's 2010 electricity consumption was 2,259,998 MWh.
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The impact of search
How efficient are we? As a result of our efforts, the energy used per Google search is very small. The above comparisons show how doing 100 searches compares to using a laptop, turning on a light, or drinking orange juice. Specifically, we currently use about 0.0003 kWh of energy to answer the average search query. This translates into roughly 0.2g of carbon dioxide.
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The impact of YouTube & Gmail
Similar to search, we calculated the carbon dioxide emissions for some everyday activities and objects and compared them to YouTube and Gmail. Specifically, watching YouTube for 1 minute consumes about 0.0002 kWh, and generates approximately 0.1 g carbon dioxide. Google consumes 2.2 kWh per Gmail user every year, and generates 1.2 kg of carbon dioxide.
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