“As we said when we made our first residential solar investment, we think it makes a lot of sense to use solar photovoltaic (PV) technology—rooftop solar panels—to generate electricity right where you need it at home,” says Google Director of Green Business Operations Rick Needham. “It greens our energy mix by using existing roof space while avoiding transmission constraints, and it can be cheaper than drawing electricity from the traditional grid.”

“Purchasing a solar system is a major home improvement, but the upfront cost has historically been one of the biggest barriers for homeowners,” Needham adds. “Solar installers across the country don’t always have the resources to find financing for customers, or the capital to provide it themselves. And for investors like Google, banks and others, it can be difficult to enter a fragmented solar market with many companies, and get connected to individual homeowners.”

Clean Power Finance has an open platform to connect installers and investors (Google in this case) to help homeowners finance the changes.

“Solar installers sign up with Clean Power Finance to get access to the company’s comprehensive sales solutions, including consumer financing from investors, like the Google fund,” explains Needham. “This enables installers to sell more systems and grow their business. The installer builds the system, the investor (in this case, Google) owns it, and homeowners pay a monthly payment for the system, at a price that’s often less than paying for energy from the grid. Maintenance and performance are taken care of by Clean Power Finance and its network of installers.”

You can see more about Google’s various investments in clean energy here. They include, in addition to the Clean Power Finance investment, $280 in SolarCity (solar for residential rooftops), $10 million in Brightsource (solar), a 37.5% equity stake in Atlantic Wind Connection, $157 million in Alta Wind Energy Center, $100 million into Shepherd’s Flat (wind farm), $38.8 million into Peace Garden wind farms, and about $5 million in Photovoltaics (solar).

Google has had solar panels on its own headquarters since 2007.

Since I arrived at Google in 2006, I’ve been part of a team working to create life-sustaining buildings that support the health and productivity of Googlers. We avoid materials that contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other known toxins that may harm human health, so Googlers don’t have to worry about the air they’re breathing or the toxicity of the furniture, carpet or other materials in their workspaces. We also use dual stage air filtration systems to eliminate particulates and remaining VOCs, which further improves indoor air quality.

Since building materials don’t have ingredient labels, we’re pushing the industry to adopt product transparency practices that will lead to real market transformation. In North America, we purchase materials free of the Living Building Challenge Red List Materials and EPA Chemicals of Concern, and through the Pharos Project we ask our suppliers to meet strict transparency requirements.

He goes on to discuss how Google strives to shrink its environmental footprint by trying to use the most efficient methods of heating, cooling, and lighting, as well as performing water audits and implementing conservation measures.

You might also recall that Google uses goats to mow its lawns (at least it has before). That’s pretty green.

As long as we’re on the subject of Google’s facilities, Googler Avinash Kaushik said on Google+, “By now I should not be surprised when I walk into a Google building. They are warm, welcoming and always have something fun. All around the world. But yesterday when I walked into building 46 in Mt. View I still stopped in my tracks when I saw the attached beautiful thing. It is huge, a gorgeous blue, surprising and the just so delightful. I walked all around and up and down and just smiled. Then went on to do some great work. I wonder if that counts as ROI.”

He then shared the following picture:

"Our ongoing philosophy has been to improve the efficiency of our infrastructure and we continue to invest tremendous resources to improve our own operations,” said Jonathan Heiliger, Vice President of Technical Operations at Facebook.

“By creating and sharing innovative technology solutions, we hope to help raise the visibility of the importance of environmental sustainability across all industries. Today, we’re proud to be joining with DESC to help make efficiency and environmental responsibility a priority for everyone."

Earlier this year, Facebook engineers launched a programming language, HipHop for PHP, which allowed their servers to do the same amount of work with half the number of servers. To spread the benefit, Facebook has open sourced the programming language so that other companies can get the same energy saving benefits.

To promote its sustainability efforts, Facebook has also launched a Facebook/green Page as a resource for individuals and organizations. Facebook will be working with environmental organizations to administer the Page.

Under the program, the first 250,000 people to pledge to reuse on eBay, the company will protect an acre of rainforest in their name through a new collaboration with Team Earth, a coalition of non-governmental organizations, private sector companies and individuals convened by Conservation International.

Along with the launch of the Green Team Challenge, eBay has introduced a new green shopping site, designed to help people access green products.

The new shopping hub is a result of the requests of eBay Green Team members, a community of nearly 150,000 individuals committed to making greener lifestyle choices.

To promote the challenge, eBay is teaming up with Hearst Magazines for the second year in a row, for their month long "30 Days of Green" program. The collaboration features a three-page ad insert that will run in the April issues of all 15 Hearst magazines. The ads will feature a variety of eBay items and will aim to educate consumers about being green.

"We at eBay are constantly looking for ways to show our community of 90 million users that their shopping decisions can have real environmental impact," said Amy Skoczlas Cole, Director of the eBay Green Team.

"This year, through our collaborations with Hearst and Team Earth, we have the opportunity to not only educate millions of consumers about the green value of shopping used, but translate that action into tangible environmental impact."
 

"Consumers don’t want to give up the modern conveniences of life," said Suzanne Shelton, whose firm conducted the survey. "We’re all basically saying, ‘I’ll be green as long it doesn’t make me uncomfortable or inconvenienced.’"

Here’s how many would be willing to give up each of the following conveniences:

- iPod – 38%
- Dishwasher – 35%
- Microwave – 25%
- Cellular phone – 21%
- Air conditioning – 14%
- TV – 13%
- Computer – 7%
- Car – 6%
- None of the above – 21%
- All of the above – 6%

I find it interesting that more people are willing to give up their microwaves than their cell phones. I know these new smartphones are cool, but can they cook a meal in three and a half minutes?

"For most Americans, what once were considered conveniences have become necessities," Shelton said. "That means the green movement has its work cut out for it: Convenience and comfort are big barriers for consumers going green."

"It means a lot of people simply won’t take on green projects, or buy a green product if they have to go to a different store to find it or if it somehow takes away from their personal comfort," Shelton added.

The survey polled 1,006 consumers from across the United States. 60% of them are looking for greener products, but when asked to choose between comfort, convenience, and the environment, they chose 36%, 38%, and 26% respectively.

Would you give up any of the aforementioned items if you knew it would help the environment? What is more important to you, convenience, comfort, or the environment? Discuss in the comments.

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”

Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines – about 2% of global CO2 emissions. “Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power.

In what appears to be a response to this article, Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations at Google, has put up a post on the Official Google Blog. Hölzle says:

But as computers become a bigger part of more people’s lives, information technology consumes an increasing amount of energy, and Google takes this impact seriously. That’s why we have designed and built the most energy efficient data centers in the world, which means the energy used per Google search is minimal. In fact, in the time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than Google uses to answer your query…

We’ve made great strides to reduce the energy used by our data centers, but we still want clean and affordable sources of electricity for the power that we do use. In 2008 our philanthropic arm, Google.org, invested $45 million in breakthrough clean energy technologies. And last summer, as part of our Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative (RE<C), we created an internal engineering group dedicated to exploring clean energy.

Between those paragraphs, Hölzle explains why the estimates made in the article about Google’s energy consumption are too high, which also cites Second Life and Twitter as potential energy problems. I must admit that energy consumption is not something I often think about when using any of these sites, and even if the article is off in it’s numbers, the issue discussed is still an interesting one to consider.

The Internet world however has opened up new doors where one can reduce their footprint significantly and offset that which cannot be eliminated. As we at Beanstalk have constantly strived to reduce our footprint and have just recently purchased carbon offsets to “zero out” that which we cannot eliminate, I thought it well-timed to write an article on the ease and relative low cost of doing this in hopes that other businesses would follow suit.

First, let’s take a look at a problem.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that global warming is an issue. In case you need more information on this you simply need to watch the news. But that’s not the problem, that’s the symptom – the problem is pollution and the rapid production of greenhouse gases. Or is that a symptom too? I would present to you that perhaps the production of greenhouse gases is in itself a symptom of another problem, a problem we all succumb to too often – the problem being that the issues seem to large to fix.

When one looks at the issue of global warming one can’t help but think of the issue as too large to be tackled. The problem is similar to recycling (also important). What difference is one little scrap of paper going to make in the garbage can? When 7 billion people do it, quite a bit is the answer.

Second, let’s take a look at a solution.

I’ve got to tip my hat to Google and other massive companies that put up solar panels and invest millions of dollars to reduce their impact on the world. Unfortunately Beanstalk is not as blessed as the fine folks at Google and we just don’t have those kinds of resources to “go green”. So what can we do?

Here are some steps that Internet companies can take to help further reduce and/or offset their impact on the world around them. Before I get into that I’d like to extend a big thanks to Erik Blachford over at TerraPass for answering some questions for me and providing additional information for this article and how we can all help out.

1. Reduce paper consumption – One of the easiest things we did at Beanstalk was to reduce our paper consumption. We print double-sided when possible, we use the reverse side of paper for note paper when we can and we always make sure to reuse any paper possible.

2. Recycle whatever possible – There’s the recyclables that we all know about and can recycle conveniently on the curb. The papers and aluminum and plastics. There are recycling programs available however for a ton of other products that we often don’t think of. From soft plastics (all those plastic bags and even the plastic covers on the CD sleeves your hardware drivers come on) to Styrofoam – most everything can be recycled. Even your old computers and the batteries that power your wireless devices. It might cost a bit to drop off or have picked up but how much is your planet worth?

3. Offset your impact – Companies such as TerraPass enable others to offset the carbon emissions they produce through transportation, heating and electricity and create clean energy in an amount that will reduce future carbon dioxide emissions by an equal amount. Basically, this enables you to zero out your impact. Of course, producing less pollution and carbon dioxide is the best option but you’re running an Internet business – you need power (if for nothing else than for your web hosting). Now we can offset this impact in a positive way.

For years we at Beanstalk have sought to fulfill the first two items in this list. This year we have added in the third and would invite others to do the same. The more we do now, the better the world we leave for those coming after.

Rather than babble on further about all you can do, I’m going to simply put some of the better Q&A information I got from Erik at TerraPass and provide some resources to help those of you who would like to make their office (even if it’s a home office) a greener place.

Q&A With Erik Blachford:

Q – What can businesses do to help reduce their emissions?

A – The first step is to measure emissions, which most of our Carbon Balanced Business customers do using our website calculator (www.terrapass.com/business). For most businesses, the main sources of emissions are from things like office or manufacturing energy usage, employee travel and commuting, data centers, and the like. Once businesses have done the calculations, they are in a great position to understand where they make reductions. For example a company whose employees travel often can look for opportunities to combine multiple trips into one, saving on plane rides (saves the company money as well), or skip trips altogether. And a surprising number of companies can save energy in obvious ways such as turning the lights off at night (if the janitorial staff comes through at night, perhaps they can be rescheduled to come during the day). Another popular idea is to provide employees incentives, monetary or otherwise, to take public transportation, ride bikes or walk to work. Quite often companies are already providing subsidies for employee parking, so this again can be a way for businesses to save both the environment and some money.

Q – Internet businesses tend to produce far less waste than most other industries in the form of paper and other waste products. Is electricity really that big a source of pollution?

A – Yes it is, especially for companies that run data centers, though it depends on where the companies and data centers are located. Companies in Quebec, Canada for example are likely getting virtually all of their power from Hydro Quebec, so would have a very low carbon footprint, whereas those in a US state like West Virginia get virtually all of their power from coal-fired power plants, so have very high carbon footprints for their energy use. Electricity is about 79.5% of carbon emissions from commercial energy consumption. Author’s Note: This is not to say that people in Quebec should waste energy. That which they don’t use can be used elsewhere thus reducing the footprint of other areas. In fact, this is one of the fundamentals of carbon offsets. That which can be created cleanly should be used to offset that which cannot.

Q – What is a carbon offset?

A – I would say “a carbon offset represents an independently verified permanent registered reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in an amount equal to the emissions that are being offset.

Other Important Resources For A Green Office

Tip For A Greener Office – An article by the Environmental Defense Fund with some great tips for a more environmental office. We try to follow as many of these tips as possible ourselves. I recommend that you do the same (and it’s pretty easy – they’re all common sense).

Going Green At Work – Discovery Channel’s Planet Green offers these ten tips for going green in the office. Again, common sense but then – the right thing usually is.
 

Their methods of going about this, however, have gotten the site’s search functionality revoked by Google. When you try to perform a search on Forestle, you get a big pink box with a message from the Forestle team. The message goes:

We just received an email from Google in which they announced the end of the partnership with Forestle. They said that we offered "incentives to click artificially on sponsored links" and that this was not compliant with their policies.

We displayed a note at the top of the Forestle result page that says, "only click on Google sponsored links if you are really interested in them." Also we saved 0.1 m² per search and not per click! So where did we offer incentives to click on ads?

Philipp Lenssen at Blogoscoped notes that Forestle’s explanation page says, "Forestle earns advertising revenue from clicks on ’sponsored link." Lenssen also got a comment out of Google who referred to their program policies page and said:

“Forestle was in violation of our terms of service. When we are made aware of a potential policy violation, our team of specialists will manually review the site to make sure it abides by our program policies. In this case we have stopped serving ads to Forestle.”

Forestle is encouraging users to try the search engine at Znout.com (also based on Google Custom Search) as an alternative until they resolve the situation with Google. I have to assume that Znout’s policies are in line with Google’s.

Reading about CO2Stats (via TechCrunch), a company who says it monitors your website’s environmental footprint and purchases renewable energy to neutralize it:

[...] The carbon footprint of air and automobile transportation is widely known, but few people are aware that the electricity generation required for information and communication technologies (ICT) is now responsible for 2% of global CO2 emissions, exceeding the emissions of the entire aviation industry. With CO2Stats it is for the first time possible to get precise emissions data on a site-by-site basis, enabling fine-grained ownership and management of environmental footprints at the experience level.

We’re paying more attention to green issues and energy conservation with things like recycling, asking more questions of manufacturers and suppliers about their supply chain and their social responsibilities regarding the environment.

So why not concerning your website?

I’m already green thanks to my hosting service, DreamHost.

How about you?

Comments

It’s not another Yahoo story about the environment or Google putting up solar panels. The ‘Green Monday’ name dreamed up by eBay, PayPal, and Shopping.com reflects economic thoughts, not environmental ones.

The logic goes like this: all the big spending for the holidays happens the second week of December. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, they’re nice and everything, but the credit cards really hit the retail world after those days.

According to analysis firm comScore, there may be truth to that theory. Online US retail spending for December 10th, also known as "this past Monday," reached $881 million, 33 percent up from the same Monday last year.

US non-travel retail spending has topped $20 billion from November 1st through December 11th, comScore said in a statement.

"Consumers are clearly responding positively to the enticing promotions and discounts being offered by retailers this year, and spending is currently on track to meet our forecast of $29.5 billion for the season," said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni.

Ina Steiner at AuctionBytes said PayPal data shows the second Monday in December has been the busiest online shopping day of the year since 2001. Shopping.com, an eBay property, saw record activity on December 10th this year.

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