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| Google Googles Green... Sometimes |
| Google responds to beTurtle.com's not so green allegations |
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Mechele Shoneman (sethsuper)  |
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Published 2007-12-26 12:02 (KST) |
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Google is a leader in the IT industry, and garners the respect of millions of people around the globe for everything from its search platform to Google Earth. And like many companies recently, Google poses itself as a leader in its environmental practices as well. Does Google live up to its image and its purported environmental friendliness? Although Google has implemented some policies that go far in helping Mother Earth, the company does seem to have a split personality when it comes to being a role model for other industry leaders.
The Good
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FROM THE SECTION |
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| Google has a few high profile initiatives that are setting the bar high for environmental practices. Google offers its full-time staffers subsidies to purchase high-efficiency personal vehicles that achieve 45 miles per gallon or better. Google also offers its employees incentives for ridesharing, as well as a fleet of biodiesel shuttles that pick up Googlers at stops throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to the free transit to and from work, Google offers a car-sharing program that allows those employees that did not bring their own car to work the use of a car for errands during the day.
RechargeIT.org is the initiative under Google.org (Google's philanthropic foundation) that is overseeing Google's hybrid and experimental plug-in hybrid program. The foundation also just announced that it is seeking to invest a total of $10 million in non-profit groups that are working on hybrid technology.
Google has also recently installed what may be the largest corporate solar panel installation in the US. The new panels at the Mountain View campus will generate 1.6 megawatts of electricity to offset the campus' consumption. Google is also working on reducing the energy that it uses by tweaking every computer's energy management software to save the 50 to 60 percent of electricity that an idle computer wastes.
Furthermore, Google is working with Intel on a "Climate Savers Computing Initiative" to reduce energy consumption industry-wide, and Google has announced that it will be joining the Green Grid, another industry initiative to improve energy efficiency. Google is also building new server centers at locations where renewable energy is available. For example, a new center in The Dalles in Oregon will be close to a hydroelectric dam, and will also use water from the Columbia River to cool the server rooms, that will in turn reduce the need for air conditioning.
Google announced this summer that in addition to reduced energy consumption and increased efficiency, Google will strive to become carbon neutral by the end of 2007. Whatever carbon emissions remain after energy efficiency measures are implemented will be taken care of by purchasing carbon offsets.
The Bad
The biggest issue with Google's environmental practices is that no matter how much the company claims to reduce its energy consumption, Google refuses to divulge how much energy the company uses, claiming it's a competitive business and that knowledge of its energy usage becoming public could be damaging. Essentially that means that we have to take Google at its word rather than have some numbers to evaluate and compare. With no clearly defined reductions, Google's pledge to become carbon neutral seems hollow and ambiguous. Furthermore, Google claims to be advocating for public policies to encourage green technology, but this move is also not backed up by any specific instances.
Also, it is hard to take a company's environmental policies seriously when the top Google executives purchase a Boeing 767 and have it refurbished as a "party plane." A normal 767 can accommodate 180 passengers, but the Google Jet's new format can carry only 50 passengers, and instead has several suites in which the co-founders and the CEO have bedrooms with king-sized beds. Google has no formal relationship with the plane as it is owned through a third-party. The New York Times reported that the Google brass have recently purchased an additional 757.
In addition to environmental issues, Google is also facing scrutiny over its labor practices in China, as well as censorship in China. Last year, Google agreed to filter searches that used words like democracy or Tibet, and Reporters Without Borders found that pro-Beijing sites would be offered if such a search were conducted. And yet, Google had no safeguards for distributing child pornography in Brazil last year, and faces possible criminal investigation for not revealing the source of the material. Google claims that it has no control over its social networking site, Orkut, which is where the pornography was found.
The Google
Google has some good ideas when it comes to reducing its carbon footprint, but most of those ideas are still just that -- ideas with no clearly defined goals. If Google wants to show that it is serious about reducing its energy consumption, it would be in its best interest to publicly state by how much Google will indeed reduce the amount of electricity it currently uses.
Also, though it's admirable that Google is using hydroelectric power from an Oregon dam, dams are usually destructive to the environment in their own way and using the river to cool server rooms will in turn heat the water that will be released back into the environment. In addition, Google does not delineate how other server centers to be built in North and South Carolina, Iowa and Oklahoma will be using renewable energy.
Furthermore, biodiesel has its own downside; fossil fuels are used in current farming practices and the carbon released usually outweighs the carbon saved. Producing crops for making biofuels requires the use of more and more green space. This pushes up the price of other crops. And no offense, Google, but carbon offsets are the easy way out for a company that has already made over $3 billion this year.
So though it may seem that Google is taking the lead in the race to become the IT company with the best environmental record, looking at the fine print shows that Google is putting more effort into its claims and public relations machine than into its actions.
| | Response to beTurtle.com by Bill Weihl, Google's Green Energy Czar | | | |
Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal (RE < C): it's the new green initiative we just announced and the core of its goal. We want to accelerate the pace at which clean energy is developed and adopted, and we're optimistic that we can decrease our dependence on coal within years, not decades. Our goal is to build 1 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal -- enough energy to power a city the size of San Francisco -- and if we succeed, we hope to help the world start satisfying most of its electricity needs through clean sources.
With our experience designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive data centers, we're applying the same creativity, innovation, and efficiency to generating renewable electricity at scale. Our data centers already use half the energy of the industry standard. We think we can do more, and do it faster. Coal, supplying 40% of the world's electricity, is the primary power source worldwide, and the greenhouse gases it produces are one of our greatest environmental challenges. Producing electricity from renewable energy cheaper than coal would be a key part of reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions.
To lead our efforts, we're creating an internal research and development team to investigate key sources of renewable energy. RE < C is hiring world-class engineers, entrepreneurs, and technologists with varied expertise to launch significant efforts in solar-thermal, geothermal, and high-altitude wind technologies. We expect to spend tens of millions of dollars in 2008, and hundreds of millions of dollars in the long run, to achieve this goal.
Our philanthropic arm, Google.org, is making strategic investments in these same three areas. We recently invested in two companies that have shown potential for scalable breakthrough technologies that are cost-competitive with coal: Makani Power of Alameda, CA and eSolar Inc. of Pasadena, CA. Makani Power develops high-altitude wind-energy extraction techniques that harness the world's most powerful wind resources. They seek to produce this energy at an unsubsidized real cost below that of the least costly coal-fired power plants. eSolar Inc., working in solar-thermal technology, uses reflected sunlight as a heat source to drive electric generators. Solar-thermal technology is the most cost-effective way to produce utility-scale power from the sun.
This initiative represents the latest step in our commitment to a clean energy future. As BeTurtle writes, Google has been a leader in energy efficiency and has been working to minimize our greenhouse-gas emissions and reduce any effect we're having on climate change. Solving climate change will require large-scale global initiative, from individuals to the largest organizations. As a company, we have a growing need for clean, cheap, and reliable energy, and we -- and the planet -- need better options. | | | | |
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How have your greenhouse emissions and/or water use changed over the past year? (Select as many as necessary) (2008-07-16 ~ 2008-09-23) |
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| This article has appeared on my Web site www.beturtle.com |
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©2007 OhmyNews
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