Earlier this month, Google revealed how it uses cloud computing as a part of its inner workings for green IT. The company launched The Big Picture, a website that allows users to access its figures for energy use and its carbon footprint, which CloudPro said were previously kept close to the company.

The company produced 1.46 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2010, Google said. The company says that number would have been doubled if it didn't implement efficiency measures in its data center. Google said it has only used 50 percent of the energy of most data centers, but CloudPro said they did not say where this information came from.

“To provide you with Google products for a month – not just search, but Google+, Gmail, YouTube and everything else we have to offer – our servers use less energy per user than a light left on for three hours,” wrote Urs Hoelzle, senior vice president of technical infrastructure, on the Google blog. He said the company has been carbon neutral since 2007 thanks to the measures they have taken.

Google said it used 2.3 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity last year, the same as what 207,000 homes would use in about a year of power consumption, according to The Associated Press. The news source said this would also equal about 41 Empire State Buildings.