Google is a leader in the IT industry, and garners the respect of millions of people around the globe for everything from its search platform to Google Earth.  And like many companies recently, Google poses itself as a leader in its environmental practices as well.  Does Google live up to its image and its purported environmental friendliness?  Although Google has implemented some policies that go far in helping Mother Earth, the company does seem to have a split personality when it comes to being a role model for other industry leaders.

The Good

Google has a few high profile initiatives that are setting the bar high for environmental practices.  Google offers its full-time staffers subsidies to purchase high-efficiency personal vehicles that achieve 45 miles per gallon or better.  Google also offers its employees incentives for ridesharing, as well as a fleet of biodiesel shuttles that pick up Googlers at stops throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.  In addition to the free transit to and from work, Google offers a car-sharing program that allows those employees that did not bring their own car to work the use of a car for errands during the day.

RechargeIT.org is the initiative under Google.org (Google's philanthropic foundation) that is overseeing Google's hybrid and experimental plug-in hybrid program.  The foundation also just announced that it is seeking to invest a total of $10 million in non-profit groups that are working on hybrid technology.

Google has also recently installed what may be the largest corporate solar panel installation in the US.  The new panels at the Mountain View campus will generate 1.6 megawatts of electricity to offset the campus' consumption.  Google is also working on reducing the energy that it uses by tweaking every computer's energy management software to save the 50 to 60 percent of electricity that an idle computer wastes.

Furthermore, Google is working with Intel on a "Climate Savers Computing Initiative" to reduce energy consumption industry-wide, and Google has announced that it will be joining the Green Grid, another industry initiative to improve energy efficiency.  Google is also building new server centers at locations where renewable energy is available.  For example, a new center in The Dalles in Oregon will be close to a hydroelectric dam, and will also use water from the Columbia River to cool the server rooms, that will in turn reduce the need for air conditioning.

Google announced this summer that in addition to reduced energy consumption and increased efficiency, Google will strive to become carbon neutral by the end of 2007.  Whatever carbon emissions remain after energy efficiency measures are implemented will be taken care of by purchasing carbon offsets.

The Bad

The biggest issue with Google's environmental practices is that no matter how much the company claims to reduce its energy consumption, Google refuses to divulge how much energy the company uses, claiming it's a competitive business and that knowledge of its energy usage becoming public could be damaging.  Essentially that means that we have to take Google at its word rather than have some numbers to evaluate and compare.  With no clearly defined reductions, Google's pledge to become carbon neutral seems hollow and ambiguous.  Furthermore, Google claims to be advocating for public policies to encourage green technology, but this move is also not backed up by any specific instances.

Also, it is hard to take a company's environmental policies seriously when the top Google executives purchase a Boeing 767 and have it refurbished as a "party plane."  A normal 767 can accommodate 180 passengers, but the Google Jet's new format can carry only 50 passengers, and instead has several suites in which the co-founders and the CEO have bedrooms with king-sized beds.  Google has no formal relationship with the plane as it is owned through a third-party.  The New York Times reported that the Google brass have recently purchased an additional 757.

In addition to environmental issues, Google is also facing scrutiny over its labor practices in China, as well as censorship in China.  Last year, Google agreed to filter searches that used words like democracy or Tibet, and Reporters Without Borders found that pro-Beijing sites would be offered if such a search were conducted.   And yet, Google had no safeguards for distributing child pornography in Brazil last year, and faces possible criminal investigation for not revealing the source of the material.  Google claims that it has no control over its social networking site, Orkut, which is where the pornography was found.

The Google

Google has some good ideas when it comes to reducing its carbon footprint, but most of those ideas are still just that – ideas with no clearly defined goals.  If Google wants to show that it is serious about reducing its energy consumption, it would be in its best interest to publicly state by how much Google will indeed reduce the amount of electricity it currently uses.  Also, though it's admirable that Google is using hydroelectric power from an Oregon dam, dams are usually destructive to the environment in their own way and using the river to cool server rooms will in turn heat the water that will be released back into the environment. 

In addition, Google does not delineate how other server centers to be built in North and South Carolina, Iowa and Oklahoma will be using renewable energy.  Furthermore, biodiesel has its own downside; fossil fuels are used in current farming practices and the carbon released usually outweighs the carbon saved. Producing crops for making biofuels requires the use of more and more greenspace. This pushes up the price of other crops.  And no offense, Google, but carbon offsets are the easy way out for a company that has already made over $3 billion this year.

So though it may seem that Google is taking the lead in the race to become the IT company with the best environmental record, looking at the fine print shows that Google is putting more effort into its claims and public relations machine than into its actions.