Research conducted by a University of Harvard academic, has found that as little as two internet searches on the popular search engine Google could produce “as much carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle”.

Alex Wissner-Gross, a physicist claims that an ordinary Google search on a desktop PC produces approximately 7 grams of CO2, with two searches producing around 14 grams; the equivalent of boiling a kettle.

Dr Wissner-Gross, who works for CO2 Stats, a company that helps companies make their websites more energy efficient and carbon neutral, said that Google’s CO2 emissions stem from the amount of energy they consume by computer terminals and several data banks worldwide.

Dr Wissner-Gross stated that, “Google isn’t any worse than any other data centre operator. If you want to supply really great and fast results, then that’s going to take extra energy to do so,”

Google dismiss the latest figures stating that the figures were “”many times too high” and said that a typical search only produced 0.2 grams of CO2, as the search only used their servers for a fraction of a second.

Google went on to say: “We’ve made great strides to reduce the energy used by our data centres, but we still want clean and affordable sources of electricity for the power that we do use,”

And added that, “In 2007, we co-founded the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. This non-profit consortium is committed to cutting the energy consumed by computers in half by 2010 and so reducing global CO2 emissions by 54 million tons per year. That’s a lot of kettles.”