Excellent round-up by Kevin Anderson in the Guardian.

The tech community has also been quick to point out Google's green efforts, and tech commentator Jeremy Wagstaff highlights a possible conflict of interest for Wissner-Gross. Articles mention that Wissner-Gross has set up CO2stats.com. Wagstaff says that neither the article in the Times (nor another article at BBC News) explain:

…the website—and Wissner-Gross–directly benefits from this kind of research. C02Stats offers clients plans, ranging from $5 a month to $100, to calculate their websites total energy consumption, make it more energy efficient, and then neutralizes their carbon footprint by buying renewable energy from wind and solar farms.

Now, it’s pretty typical for news organisations to cover stories like this, and it’s a clever bit of PR. However, not to explain the business model of Wissner-Gross’s website, help put the figures in context and provide motivation for the publication of the figures. Many have asked about the figures methology, and CO2stats.com provides an outline of its method:

“CO2Stats software continuously scans your website so that it can monitor your site’s energy usage each time someone visits your site. CO2Stats is very smart, and is able to capture a large amount of data about your site’s total energy consumption. For example, it can tell what make and model of computer your visitor is using, what its electrical consumption is, and even what types of fossil fuels are being burned in order to power that computer. Likewise, it is able to detect how much and what type of energy your server is using, and even how much and what type of energy is being used to power the networks that are connecting your visitors’ computers with your servers.

That raises a question. Is Google responsible for the ineffiency of some computers that people are using to conduct their search?

Mark Anderson is riled by media criticism (unspecified) of Michael Dell’s announcement that the company has achieved his goal of making Dell carbon-neutral ahead of the schedule he had originally set.

Following an announcement two years ago that global warming was a critical problem deserving of his own company’s focus, Dell CEO and Chair Michael Dell committed his firm to obtaining what conservationists call a “carbon-neutral” footprint.

Very few firms, in or outside the tech industry, have taken the various somewhat – complicated steps often required to achieve neutral carbon impact.

This last August, 2008, the company announced it had achieved this result ahead of schedule, and Michael Dell confirmed the achievement in a speech in September.

Since then, despite positive statements by those working as outside partners on the project, the company has actually come under fire for not doing more. The basic complaint seems to be: fine, your own company has done this, but until the entire supply chain (suppliers of parts) for each product is also doing it, you have nothing to boast about.

Where do these people come from?

I would like to personally congratulate Michael Dell and his company for, first, having the guts and vision to take a leadership position on the issue of becoming carbon – neutral as a firm; and, second, for committing the company publicly, thereby endorsing the value of this positioning; and then, most important, in following through, using a variety of techniques, from customers arranging for planting trees, to buying and investing in renewable energy sources, to achieve this goal.

Dell would appear to be the first computer company to have done this, although Apple has also been making strong strides in this direction. While this may feel like a competition, it isn’t – it is a race to maintain the climate of this planet, and for each company that “wins,” we all win.

For those weird media types who find an irresistible urge to criticize a process well-done, but perhaps not yet extended, I have a bit of unasked-for advice: why not help publicize what a great job Dell is doing in its own footprint, and then encourage the Dell keiretsu to follow Dell’s example?

It seems to me that there are no negatives here at all, only two steps in the right direction, both of them positive, that every firm will need to go through: first, make sure your own firm is carbon-neutral; and, second, encourage your supply chain to join you.

Right on!

Interesting ‘revelation’ in Times Online.

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”

Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines – about 2% of global CO2 emissions. “Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power.

Hmmm… This Wissner-Gross seems to be a bright lad. He’s a Fellow at the Harvard environment Center where his bio says that in 2003 he “became the last person in MIT history to receive a triple major, with bachelors in Physics, Electrical Engineering, and Mathematics, while simultaneously graduating first in his class from the MIT School of Engineering as the Henry Ford II Scholar.” According to his home page he has seven granted or pending patents, and fourteen published papers in addition to his PhD. And he was a boy soprano for the New York City Opera. He’s also set up CO2stats, a site that claims that it “makes your site carbon neutral and shows visitors you’re environmentally friendly”.

I’m not convinced by the search vs. kettle calculation, but I am sure that the environmental impact of computing is one of the Next Big Stories.

Thanks to Darren Waters for the original link.

From The INQUIRER…

AMD ONCE HAD 135 servers crunching data for its Austin Texas HQ. Now, having virtualised the lot using VMware’s virtualisation software it has cut that number to just seven. The move resulted in 79 per cent power savings, Margaret Lewis, AMD director of commercial solutions* and software strategy told the INQ this week.