Google: The Greening of Google

Urs Hlzle says hes the villain at Google, when it comes to

energy use. As senior VP of operations, hes in charge of the infrastructure

that powers the worlds top search engine, and so hes responsible for

energy usage and carbon dioxide emissions.

Last year, the processor world saw a shift away from the path

toward more and more raw power, to performance per watt. The superchips

had reached performance and power levels that caused them to superheat, unless

they were actively cooled. Data centers, which house dozens of server racks,

each with multi-CPU servers, generate megawatts of heat. Cooling them needs

massive air-conditioning, which itself is a power-guzzler. Hlzle says that a

typical data center wastes over 65% of the power it consumes, as heat.

Google is tackling this in several ways. The first is by using

evaporative cooling, which uses much less energy than data centers with

conventional air-conditioning. The second is to get its suppliers to use more

efficient power supplies and components, to raise the efficiency of its servers.

These steps, Google says, results in data centers that use 50% less energy.

The Internet search company is also taking other steps toward

becoming carbon neutral by next year. It runs its employee shuttles on bio

diesel in the San Francisco area, uses video conferencing to reduce travel,

subsidizes the purchase of energy-efficient cars by employees, and gives free

bicycles to employees in Europe.

It also has among the largest solar panel installations in the

world at Googleplex, its Mountain View, California, headquarters, which will

generate up to 1.6 MW, and produces nearly 10 megawatt-hours on a sunny day (see

photos). This, says Hlzle, also makes financial sense: the panels pay for

themselves in 18 years, but last 25.

But even this mammoth station will meet less than 30% of the

energy demands of the Googleplex. Yet Google plans to be carbon-neutral by end

2008, by offsetting the rest of the emissions due to its fossil-fuel-based power

consumption. Carbon offsetting involves investing in projects that should lead

to the prevention of future greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere in the world, or

in projects that will lead to the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,

for example by planting trees. Google has a host of green initiatives, including

investing in a plug-in hybrid cars project (photos). (It can also offset some

balance by buying carbon creditssomething a few Indian companies have been

sellingon the Chicago or European climate exchanges).

Plug in and Recharge IT: Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin plug in a hybrid car. Google.org, the CSR arm of the search giant, plans to spend $10 mn on RechargeIT, a project to accelerate plug-in hybrid and vehicle-to-grid technology. Pure electric cars like the Reva (revaindia.com) use only batteries for power, and are impractical for regular commutes because of limited range and charging stations. Hence, the hybrid car. Hybrids like the Toyota Prius draw power from both an electric motor, and a petrol engine that charges the batteries. A plug-in hybrid is the best of both worlds: it uses higher-capacity rechargeable batteries, and gives you the option of plugging in to charge the battery overnight, so that for short daily commutes, you could avoid using the petrol engine altogether. Vehicle-to-grid technology intends to let car owners plug in and sell power back to the grid, at peak tariff times.

Powered by the sun: Last October, Google launched the largest solar panel installation on a US corporate campus, and since then has installed over 90% of the 9,212 solar panels that comprise the 1.6 MW project. This installation will produce enough electricity for 1,000 US homes, or 30% of Google's peak electricity demand at the Mountain View, CA headquarters. Seen from the air, the panels cover the rooftops of eight buildings and two newly constructed solar carports at the Googleplex.

Google, Intel, and others have launched the Climate Savers

Computing Initiative, an effort to increase the energy efficiency of computers

and servers. By 2010, the project seeks to reduce global greenhouse gas

emissions from the operation of computers by 54 mn tons per year, equivalent to

the annual output of 11 mn cars or a dozen coal-fired power plants. A typical

desktop PC wastes over half the power delivered even when its not in use. The

CSCI project seeks to save 70-80% of the power currently consumed by desktop

computers: with a more efficient power supply and DC-to-DC converters, and

power-management features.

Power saving is a very underrated interest area in India, which

means vendors and the industry assume, incorrectly, that its not of great

concern to enterprises, barring laptop users. Hence the poor availability of

low-power desktops and servers. In fact, companies in India are greatly

interested in low-power systems, and it has little to do with environmental

concerns. Its simply to do with the cost and trouble of multi-level backup,

UPSs and generators, which is actually driving companies to buy LCDs and even

laptops. But IT departments and CIOs have thus far not taken it upon themselves

to initiate organization-wide power conservation and reduction. Googles green

initiativethough it might not extend to its growing India officessuggests

that it can be done, and it makes business sense in the long run.

Prasanto K Roy





pkr@cybermedia.co.in



The author was hosted by Google at its annual press day in Paris