Searches on Facebook make up about 40% of the internet’s carbon footprint, which itself equals the emissions of the aviation industry, according to researcher Joanna Moll . CO2GLE: (Click here to launch “CO2GLE” and see a real-time counter.) Energy for servers, undersea cables, routers and switches comes from carbon dioxide-emitting fossil-fuel power sources. Google has not contested the figures and said it is designing energy-efficient data centres, but scientists said it is still not clear how much greenhouse gas search engines generate. The research concentrated on Google because of its size, but among other online businesses Google has admitted that its operations generate similar emissions to 3.5 billion Barcelona homes.
Searches on Facebook make up about 40% of the internet’s carbon footprint, which itself equals the emissions of the aviation industry, according to researcher Joanna Moll . Energy for servers, undersea cables, routers and switches comes from carbon dioxide-emitting fossil-fuel power sources. Google has not contested the figures and said it is designing energy-efficient data centres, but scientists said it is still not clear how much greenhouse gas search engines generate. The research concentrated on Google because of its size, but among other online businesses Google has admitted that its operations generate similar emissions to 3.5 billion Barcelona homes.