As it expands its toolkit to assist users in evaluating their environmental effect, Google's cloud computing business is getting ready to disclose the carbon footprint for its Workspace products, including Gmail and Docs.
According to Bloomberg, the action by Alphabet Inc.'s Google Cloud strengthens policies established the previous year to assist customers in quantifying and lowering the overall carbon emissions associated with utilizing Google Cloud services.
The Google corporate logo hangs outside the Google Germany offices on August 31, 2021 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Google Workspace's Carbon Footprint: How This Calculator Works
Gizmodo reports that Google's new tool will let businesses using Google Workspace calculate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with their use of Google products like Drive, Gmail, and Meet.
The carbon footprint calculator will account for both the direct and indirect emissions caused by Google's energy use.
All of the text you input using Google's services is saved on a server that retrieves it online and stores it using an electrical source. The search engine behemoth will now display to businesses the total climate effect of their share of the servers.
Google officials disclosed the tool and other projects ahead of the Google Cloud Sustainability Summit.
This tool will be particularly beneficial for businesses who seek a precise estimate of their overall emissions.
Google did not, however, make it clear what it expected businesses to do with the information or how they should reduce emissions.
ALSO READ: Google's Mysterious Sentient AI Dangerous? Narcissist Bot Could Escape to Do Bad Things
Along with the Workspace carbon calculator, the search engine behemoth also unveiled a brand-new tool for measuring emissions and energy consumption, as well as new sustainability-related collaborations.
A choice for Google Cloud users to get their server storage from low-carbon areas will also be made available, according to the firm.
Businesses have the option to click a box that limits the Cloud services they provide to those produced in a limited number of locations using renewable energy sources.
Technology's Contribution to Carbon Footprint
With approximately 4.66 billion people using the internet regularly globally, or around 60% of the world's population, each user's online behavior matters.
The environment has benefited from digitalization during the past 20 years. However, the Internet did not appear out of thin air, and even the use of digital technology comes with a cost.
Digital technologies, according to ESCP, account for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and have an annual energy consumption growth rate of 9%.
Additionally, 1.6 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions are produced annually by the internet.
By 2025, the power used by the communications sector will account for 20% of global electricity consumption.
E-waste production reached more than 50 million tons in 2019 alone, and is projected to increase by 8% annually.
These figures demonstrate how each click is resource-intensive and has an effect that is invisible to us but that people shouldn't overlook any more.
Google's Climate Change Pledge
One of the most significant environmental promises among the digital oligopolies was made by Google in 2020. According to The Verge, it has committed to making every effort to run all of its operations entirely on carbon-free energy by 2030.
It has also declared that it has acquired enough carbon offsets to offset all of the greenhouse gas emissions that the business has generated since its founding in 1998.
According to another Bloomberg report, Google became carbon neutral in 2007. This implies that instead of burning fossil fuels, Google invests in renewable energy projects or other programs that remove carbon dioxide from the environment and store it.
Relying on offsets, however, does not truly exempt Google from using fossil fuels. More than 1 million passenger vehicles' worth of greenhouse emissions were generated by the corporation in a single year, or 4.9 million metric tons, in 2008.
Google's promise announcement happened as California continued to experience smoke from fires, which is made significantly worse by climate change.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, stated that the corporation has until 2030 to provide a sustainable plan for the planet, failing which people might all face the worst consequences of climate change.
Pichai continued by saying that we are already suffering the effects of everything from flooding in various regions of the world to wildfires in the United States.
RELATED ARTICLE: Google Maps Adds Air Quality Index to Help Users Decide Where to Go and Avoid Places With High Pollution Level
Check out more news and information on Technology and Climate Change in Science Times.
