Today’s Sunday Times  carried a report on work by Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross which asserts that two Google searches can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea. This is because of the way Google runs its international networks.

The Sunday Times reports that an April 2007 report by industry analysts Gartner  have estimated the use of electricity by the ICT industry at 2% of global carbon dioxides emissions, similar to the amount produced by airlines.   Gartner published advice to the industry on how to reduce the environmental footprint of networks in December 2007

Virtual travel may not be as green as some protagonists claim. In the same Sunday Times article it is reported that  “Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, Rewiring the World, has calculated that maintaining a character (known as an avatar) in the Second Life virtual reality game, requires 1,752 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is almost as much used by the average Brazilian.”

More information at Making Websites Green www.co2stats.com