Google Operations Uses Enough Power For 200,000 Homes

While completing a search on Google is quite possibly the easiest process you can accomplish using a website those billions of searches cost Google dearly in electrical costs each year.

According to the San Jose Mercury News Google data centers use enough power for 200,000 homes, that’s equivalent to 2.3 billion kilowatt hours annually.

While some critics have said Google’s power consumption is out of hand, those critics often fail to take into consideration the fact that users no longer need to hop in their vehicles or take other modes of transportation to the library or book stores in order to acquire information, a fact that saves far more electricity than Google consumes.

In their first ever public release pertaining to energy use Google executives revealed that the company emitted 1.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year, the equivalent of 70,000 Americans. Google also revealed that nearly 25% of their energy consumption comes from renewable fuels, a number they say will increase to 30% in 2011.

In an attempt to reduce their energy costs Google in 2010 applied for and received permission to buy energy at wholesale pricing, a move that has helped the company reduce energy costs while receiving a leg up against competitors during the cloud computing boon. Saving energy is an important part of the company’s cloud strategy which includes search, email, documents and other aspects of the company’s business sectors.

YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps and the rest of Google’s applications are included in their energy consumption numbers.

Does Google energy consumption surprise you?