Google: Good or Evil When It Comes to the Environment?

Now that it has unseated Microsoft as Earth's most recognizable and influential technology behemoth, Google has gone from a crowd-favorite upstart to an octopus multinational beneath the bull's-eye. As such, its innovations in search, advertising, video, open sourcing, communications, computing and beyond have taken a backseat to legitimate concerns over everything from its impossible motto, "Don't Be Evil," to its carbon footprint. And while the former is a terminological chimera, the latter is an increasing problem for a planet that is practically warming by the day, due to a lethal combination of explosive global growth, rampant carbon dioxide emissions and lackluster world policy.

To mangle the cliche, the evil is in the details.

According to a recent Harper's annotation on Google's expansion, "In 2006, American data centers consumed more power than American televisions." That number is sure to rise, possibly exponentially, as Google breeds these data centers, or "server farms," like rabbits. And the company is far from alone: AT&T, Microsoft, Yahoo and more are building out their infrastructures to accommodate the millions who are coming online and sharing not just lightweight information like email but also heavier content like video, images and audio.

According to the annotation's author, Ginger Strand, a new server farm being built by Google at The Dalles in Oregon is on target to chew up "103 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power 82,000 homes or a city the size of Tacoma, Washington" -- by 2011. And Google isn't alone. Strand, who also authored the forthcoming Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power, and Lies, explains that Google is soon to be joined on the Columbia River by server farms from Microsoft, Yahoo and Ask.com. By the time Google hits the 103-megawatt threshold in 2011, data-center power usage will have doubled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. In other words, the internet is no virtual world: Its energy costs will impact the real world like never before.

For its part, Google has promised to throw down the gauntlet on global warming. A year ago this month, Google's senior vice president of operations, Urs Hoelzle, promised that Google would be carbon-neutral by the end of 2007. Five months later, Google launched a strategic initiative RE < C, "Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal," that invests funds and research into, as Google explained, "advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other potentially breakthrough technologies."

"Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal," said Google co-founder Larry Page in the initiative announcement. "We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades. If we meet this goal, and large-scale renewable deployments are cheaper than coal, the world will have the option to meet a substantial portion of electricity needs from renewable sources and significantly reduce carbon emissions. We expect this would be a good business for us as well."

That's a fair expectation: One gigawatt can power San Francisco, and since coal makes up about 40 percent the world's electricity and is as dirty as Karl Rove, Google could score a sociopolitical and economic coup by kicking it to the curb in favor of renewable juice. It is the Holy Grail of climate crisis stratagems.

But is it possible? For starters, as of this writing, Google has yet to report on whether it followed through on Hoelzle's promise.

"Currently, we have a third party assessing our corporate emissions inventory and verifying our footprint for the 2007 calendar year," explains Niki Fenwick of Google's Global Communications and Public Affairs office. "Our footprint is calculated globally and includes our direct fuel use, purchased electricity, business travel, estimates for employee commuting, construction, and server manufacturing at our facilities around the world."