Can green search reduce carbon emissions?

News Article - 03 February 2009
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Businesses currently considering investing in carbonaccounting software may be interested to hear that they can also go green on their online searches.

Sylvie Barak, writing on the online pages of vnunet, points to recent research by the Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, which claimed that every Google search produced seven grams of carbon dioxide.

This equates to the same amount produced when boiling a kettle, although Google subsequently denied the findings.

However, Ms Barak notes that there are a number of search engines that have been created to limit the damage IT inflicts on the environment.

Among them are Forestle and Znout, which claim to offset all of their carbon emissions.

However, Will Critchlow, director of London-based search engine optimisation firm Distilled, told Ms Barak that he did not believe these search engines could gave a green effect.

"Lower-energy computers, turning the PC off and/or hibernating it when you don't need it, will make a far bigger difference than choosing an alternative search engine over Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft," he said.

Another green search engine, Ecocho, claims to offset its own search-related carbon emissions by planting two trees for every 1,000 searches made.

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