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Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy
Czar

Happy Earth Day! I'm sure some of you are wondering how Google
is celebrating, and we want to know href="http://www.google.com/earthday08/" id="oame"
>what you're doing too. We
work to make our business more environmentally sustainable
throughout the year, but this month, we want to support the hard
work you're doing to fight climate change. Last week we href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/we-cant-wait-for-earth-day.html"
id="op16" >blogged about some of Google's
new green tools, and now we have even more ways to help you observe
Earth Day 2008:

• Today we're launching the
  largest batch of new id="st6p" >Google Transit cities yet.
  Travelers in San Francisco, Denver, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Rhode
  Island and href="http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/04/google-transits-earth-day-challenge.html" >
  other locations across the country can now use Google Maps to
  plan trips using public transportation.
  • href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=sierra&continue=https://checkout.google.com/?upgrade=true&hl=en_US&nui=1&ltmpl=default&gsessionid=gNP_delS0_s"
    id="utli" >Google Checkout continues to
    help you and your friends and family team up and donate to
    environmental organizations. We have a new video to help you href="http://checkout.google.com/earthday/" id="a_eb"
    >learn how to donate and see how
    easy it is to map your network of generosity.
    • The href="http://desktop.google.com/" id="u_7e"
      >Google Desktop team has developed a id="r6v712"
      href="http://googledesktop.blogspot.com/2008/04/introducing-energy-saver-gadget.html" >
      handy little gadget that will help those of you making Earth
      Day pledges to reduce your energy consumption. Install the href="http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/energysaver.html?hl=en"
      id="mz7b" >Energy Saver gadget to
      enable and optimize your computer’s power management settings,
      putting it to sleep when you're not using it.

    • href="http://sketchup.google.com/" id="tpcf"
      >Google SketchUp has created a href="http://www.google.com/sketchup/green/index.html" id="bomb"
      >new site for green design professionals, and
      >Google for Educators has put
      together some [recommendations] for teachers who want to use href="http://earth.google.com/" id="x9l9"
      >Google Earth and href="http://maps.google.com/" id="bo9y" >Maps to
      teach about environmental issues in the classroom.

    • Several more Google blogs are
      celebrating Earth Day as well, so be sure to read about the id="r6v717"
      href="http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/04/google-docs-makes-being-green-easy.html" >
      teacher who has cut his paper use by using Docs and
      Spreadsheets, href="http://googlegrants.blogspot.com/2008/04/your-best-earth-day.html" >
      advertising best-practices for environmental organizations, id="r6v719"
      href="http://www.youtube.com/blog?entry=C6n3BO2Yd7g" >eco-trendspotting
      on YouTube and Google.org's tribute to the href="http://blog.google.org/2008/04/green-collar-economy.html" >green
      collar economy.

      Finally, I'll leave you with some photos of our team's trip
      to Washington, D.C. for this past Sunday’s Earth Day concert on the
      National Mall. It got a bit soggy, but we had a blast showing
      attendees how the Google Checkout donation campaign works.
      We're especially proud of our booth, which was made of
      sustainable materials and powered by energy from clean hydrogen
      fuel cells.

      src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf"
      flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&RGB=0x000000&feed=http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/katehurowitz/albumid/5191854109811605521?kind=photo&alt=rss"
      pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"
      height="192" width="288" />
      href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/blogspot/MKuf?a=dYkMSXG" > border="0" />

      height="1" width="1" />

      Tags: , Bill, CzarHappy, Earth, Energy, Green, Posted, Weihl

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy
Czar

Here's a suggestion for everyone to save energy over the
holidays (and at other times!): turn off your computer and monitor
or put them into "sleep" mode when you're not using
them.

Why? The typical desktop PC uses 100-200 watts even when it's
idle. That's the equivalent of 1-2 bright incandescent (read:
inefficient) light bulbs. (Note: new PCs that comply with the
latest Energy Star specifications consume less than 50-60 watts
when idle.)

You wouldn't leave your car running for hours when it's
just sitting there. Most of us wouldn't leave a bright light
bulb burning for hours when no one is nearby to need the light. So
why leave your computer on?

If you're leaving your office for the holidays, turn off your
PC. If it consumes 100 watts, that will save 2.4 kWh/day, or over
25 kWh for the next 11 days through January 1st. In California,
that will stop about 40 kg of CO2 from being put into the air, and
save about $2.50. For every 1 million people who do this, that will
stop 40,000 tonnes (metric tons) of CO2 from being emitted, and
save $2.5 million. In many areas, it will reduce emissions even
further, and save even more money.

The same issue applies at home: turn off your computer or put it to
sleep when you're not using it. The automatic power management
settings on most computers will put them to sleep automatically
after a specified idle period.

If you use a screensaver, set it to "blank" the screen
and put the monitor in sleep mode after a few minutes. Screensavers
don't have any benefit (other than being nice to look at) on
modern displays, and they consume as much or more energy as just
about anything else you could ask your computer to do.

You might be thinking, "why now?" This isn't just an
issue for the holidays, but this is a good time to remind people.
In general, when you're not using your computer, turn it off or
put it to sleep. Most computers can go to sleep quickly, and then
wake up with all your work exactly as it was when you put it to
sleep — so there's no downside.

If you want to do even more to save energy with your computers and
to help the entire IT industry move to higher energy efficiency,
check out the href="http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/" >Climate Savers
Computing Initiative, which we co-founded last June to create a
positive "virtuous circle" between the supply of and
demand for energy-efficient computers. More than 140 companies,
universities, governments, and nonprofits, along with thousands of
individuals, have pledged to buy energy-efficient computers and to
use automatic power management tools to save energy. As more people
make the same commitments, the volume of energy-efficient computers
sold will increase, and the very modest price premium they demand
today should drop.

Have a great holiday season!

Tags: , Bill, CzarHeres, Energy, Green, Posted, suggestion, Weihl

Posted by Dan Reicher, Director,
Climate and Energy Initiatives, Google.org

Today Google.org is launching an
exciting project that offers a glimpse of a smarter energy future:
cars that plug into an electric grid powered by solar energy.
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (“plug-in hybrids”) can achieve 70
-100 miles per gallon, quadrupling the fuel economy of the average
car on the road today (~20 mpg). As we demonstrated at today’s
event, plug-in hybrids can sell power back to the electric grid
when it's needed most through vehicle-to-grid (V2G)
technology

As you may know, one of Google.org's core missions is to
address climate change. In the U.S., transportation contributes
about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions –- with more than
60 percent of those emissions coming from personal vehicles. By
accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrids and vehicle-to-grid
("V2G") technologies, this new project, href="http://www.google.org/recharge/" >RechargeIT.org, aims to
reduce emissions and dependence on oil while promoting clean energy
technologies and increasing consumer choice. Linking the U.S.
transportation system to the electricity grid maximizes the
efficiency of our energy system. From these efforts, we believe the
environment will benefit — and consumers will have more choices to
fuel their cars.

We've been working with Google engineers and href="http://www.hymotion.com/" >Hymotion/ href="http://www.a123systems.com/" >A123Systems to build a small
fleet of plug-in hybrids, adding an external plug and additional
batteries to a regular hybrid car so that it runs on electricity
with gasoline (or even better, biofuels) to extend the driving
range for longer trips. Here's what it looks like:

onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"
href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_Ap14FtNN91w/RnbA4qOTHOI/AAAAAAAAAJc/fYo3rIHjp_0/s1600-h/PHEV_car.png" >
alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077457709546282210"
border="0" />

Since most Americans drive less than 35 miles per day, you easily
could drive mostly on electricity with the gas tank as a
"safety net." Our goal is to demonstrate the plug-in
hybrid and V2G technology, get people excited about having their
own plug-in hybrid, and encourage car companies to start building
them soon.

In the preliminary results from our test fleet, on average the
plug-in hybrid gas mileage was 30 mpg higher than that of the
regular hybrids. In conjunction with Pacific Gas and Electric, we
also demonstrated the bidirectional flow of electricity through V2G
technology, and have awarded $1 million in grants and announced
plans for a $10 million request for proposals (RFP) to fund
development, adoption and commercialization of plug-ins, fully
electric cars and related vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.
(Here's the href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/rechargeit_20070618.html" >
full release.)

As for Google Inc., today the href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/corporate-solar-is-coming.html" >
solar panel installation we announced last October is now
producing clean, renewable electricity for our Mountain View, CA
headquarters.

onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"
href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_Ap14FtNN91w/RnbFfaOTHQI/AAAAAAAAAJs/8czOFPmqUGg/s1600-h/Solarpanels_patio.png" >
alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077462773312724226"
border="0" />

The system will offset peak electricity consumption at the solar
powered offices and the newly constructed solar carports have
charging stations for the plug-in hybrids. At 1.6 megawatts — with
an electricity output capable of powering approximately 1,000
average California homes — the Google project is the largest solar
installation on any corporate campus in the U.S. to date, and one
of the largest on any corporate site in the world. To see how much
electricity these panels are producing right now, visit our new href="http://www.google.com/corporate/solarpanels" >performance
monitoring site.

To learn more about the initiative, we encourage you to explore the
rest of href="http://www.google.org/recharge/" >RechargeIT.org. And to
see what others are saying about plug-in hybrids and V2G
technology, be sure to watch this video.

Tags: , climate, Dan, Director, Energy, Initiatives, Posted, Reicher

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy
Czar

Last fall we talked about href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/towards-more-efficient-computing.html" >
our work on efficient power supplies in the capable hands of
Ben Jai, Ken Krieger and the rest of our power supply team. Since
then, we've become involved in several projects focused on
environmental stewardship. Today, for example, together with Intel,
Dell, EDS, the EPA, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, the World Wildlife
Fund, and more than 20 other companies, we href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/climate_savers_20070612.html" >
announced the href="http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/" >Climate Savers
Computing Initiative. After working on this initiative over the
last few months, we're delighted to join with so many
organizations to form this new group. In particular this project
should speak to every business with computers.

Believe it or not, a typical desktop PC wastes over half the power
delivered to it — and, when turned on, most desktops waste power —
even when they're not in use. Through some very simple
measures, there is an opportunity to save 70-80% of the power
currently consumed by desktop computers. With a more efficient
power supply, more efficient DC-to-DC converters, and
power-management features turned on, that same desktop PC would
save as much as 80% of the energy currently consumed! That energy
savings means dollars, of course; it also prevents emissions of
greenhouse gases and other pollutants.

This initiative is one example of ways we as a company can work to
reduce our environmental impact. A few others we've
undertaken:
- our fuel-efficient vehicle incentive project
- our corporate shuttle program for commuting to work
- organic, locally-sourced food in our café
- href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/corporate-solar-is-coming.html" >
our corporate solar panel installation href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/corporate-solar-is-coming.html" >

There are always more measures to take, of course. Through href="http://www.google.org/" >Google.org, for example, we are
exploring innovative technologies that promise to reduce our
collective impact on the environment. And as with Climate Savers,
we hope to set an example as well as use the convening power of
Google to further more environmental initiatives.

All of these sorts of programs, and more, are what's needed. As
ecologist Rachel Carson
put it, "Only within the moment of time represented by the
present century has one species — man — acquired significant power
to alter the nature of his world." Let's work together now
to alter things for the good of the planet.

Tags: , Bill, CzarLast, Energy, fall, Green, Posted, Weihl

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy
Czar

Reducing climate change by saving energy is an important effort we
should all join, and that's why we're very glad to see the
innovative thinking going into a variety of solutions. One idea,
suggested by the site called "Blackle" (which is not
related to Google, by the way, though the site does use our href="http://www.google.com/coop/cse/" >custom search engine),
is to reduce energy used by monitors by providing search with a
black background. We applaud the spirit of the idea, but our own
analysis as well as that of href="http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/does-a-darkened-google-really-save-electricity-104/" >
others shows that making the Google homepage black will not
reduce energy consumption. To the contrary, on flat-panel monitors
(already estimated to be 75% of the market), displaying black may
actually increase energy usage. href="http://techlogg.com/content/view/360/31/" >Detailed
results from a new study confirm this.

As computers become a bigger part of more people's lives, they
will consume an increasing amount of energy, which is why we've
invested so much in href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/towards-more-efficient-computing.html" >
making our data centers efficient and we've

href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/climate-savers-computing-initiative.html" >
joined with others to launch Climate Savers Computing, which
has a goal of reducing total power consumption by more than 50% for
all computers by 2010.

There are some things you can do now to reduce
the energy used by your computer, such as:

turn on the power management features. Virtually all computers
today have the ability to switch into low-power modes automatically
when they're idle; very few computers have this capability
enabled! href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/russel_02march25.mspx" >
Here's how to do it on computers running Windows XP.

turn off your monitor and computer when you're not using
them

turn down the brightness on your monitor

make sure your next computer meets the efficiency standards of
href="http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/" >Climate Savers
Computing (an efficient computer uses up to 50% less energy
than a conventional one)

to find the most efficient PCs available today, look for the
words "EnergyStar 4.0 compliant."

height="1" width="1" />

Tags: , Bill, climate, CzarReducing, Energy, Green, Posted, Weihl