The World's First Carbon Free Search Engine
Picsearch plants forest to take environmental responsibility
Stockholm, Sweden — It was recently announced that Picsearch is launching a 4 step program to guarantee a carbon free multimedia search. The search industry is a growing power consumer that needs to take responsibility. This is the first time that a search service company is making a commitment to be 100 percent carbon free. Picsearch encourages all colleagues in the search industry to contribute similar efforts.
Human activities have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to unprecedented levels. Unchecked, greenhouse gases will result in a rise of between 2-5 degrees in global mean temperatures within the upcoming 30-50 years (Stern Review November 2006).
The resulting temperature change will have devastating consequences to both people and wildlife. The risk of droughts, floods, storms and rising sea levels will increase. Over 200 million people could be permanently displaced. The detrimental impact of all these effects together is equal to a 5-20 percent reduction of the world GDP. (Stern Review November 2006)
Robert Risberg, Picsearch's CEO, said that "Scientific evidence clearly indicates that climate change is a serious and urgent issue. As part of the global community we can not afford to remain passive. The costs for failing to deal with the climate challenge will affect every part of the society."
Many everyday activities, like using your computer, produce greenhouse gases. Approximately 70 percent of all electricity in the US is generated from fossil fuels (Energy Information Administration 2006). Experts advise that we should conserve forests, plant more trees and decrease activities which produce greenhouse gases. In addition the price of carbon must be significantly increased so that consumption will be in line with the reality of ecological costs (Stern Review November 2006).
Picsearch takes four steps to fulfill its social responsibility towards energy consumption: (1) Picsearch plants 1000 new trees for every gigawatt-hour consumed; (2) Picsearch buys and holds in trust 2 acres of old growth forest for every gigawatt-hour consumed; (3) Picsearch only uses electricity that is carbon free and follows the highest standard of production; and (4) Picsearch buys carbon credits equivalent to all the energy that Picsearch consumes.
The electricity used by server computers alone has doubled between 2000 and 2005. This increase is linked to a number of new services becoming available on a widespread basis including: music downloads, video-on-demand and Internet telephony. Data centers for cooling, backing-up information, and networking equipment use close to 2 percent of all electricity in the US (Stanford University February 2007). This consumption rate is likely to continually increase when the number of users increases and people spend more time online.
The IT industry has seen a large decrease in price per performance during recent years, while performance per watt has remained roughly flat. It is likely that the cost of electricity running the servers today exceeds the hardware price tag. (Google September 2005)
Robert Risberg, Picsearch's CEO, said that "Trying to use energy efficient computers is good, but not good enough. Picsearch believes that we need to increase the price of energy consumption so that the real environmental costs are included in the daily business activities. We call upon all colleagues in the search engine business to follow our example."
SOURCE: Picsearch