Can a search engine offset its carbon footprint and go even further?
At Ecosia, we’re not only concerned with running on clean energy; we want to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to tackle climate change.
If the internet were a country it would rank #3 in the world in terms of electricity consumption, according to a recent Greenpeace report. Servers used to run the web need a lot of power. We believe that energy should be produced by renewable sources, and that it is the responsibility of companies to make sure their operations do not harm the planet.
That’s why in 2017, we decided to build our first solar energy plant to ensure that our servers will always be run on 100% renewable energy. The 531kWp plant is now up and running, delivering clean energy to the grid and replacing electricity derived from fossil fuels. We will build additional solar plants as our user base grows.
And that’s not all. When you install Ecosia, every search actually removes CO2 from the atmosphere because we use our profits to plant trees. This means that, if Ecosia were as big as Google, we could absorb 15% of all global CO2 emissions!
Google has been carbon neutral since 2017, but it’s only by searching with Ecosia that you can actively help to mend our planet.
