Google have just filed for a rather unique sounding concept – a data centre built on a wave energy generators out at sea. They must have been having a lateral thinking meeting to discuss the phrase “surfing the web.” Those crazy googlers. 

Google have been getting some unwanted press recently off the back of research deeming the impact of their services to be very high.

Google were quick to rebuke this on their blog, and perhaps this patent move is part of an effort to get back in the environmental good books.

The general consensus is that googleing is still okay. Just in case though, here are two direct links that any reasonable and good person will always find handy:

Switch to 100% renewable electricity with Good Energy – www.goodenergy.co.uk 

Buy energy saving products at the Good Energy Shop – www.goodenergyshop.co.uk

(just saved at least 0.4 grams of CO2. Call off Copenhagen!)

Anyway, the patent would use the UK’s pelamis wave machines, like the ones currently operating off the coast of Portugal and Scotland. Take a look at Pelamis site, while the wave energy sector is still young they seem to have come up with a pretty robust concept. 

The data idea sounds to us like a bit of a wild card – storing data out at sea. What would happen if a drunken sailor or a pirate managed to tap in and download free episodes of Desperate Housewives? We can probably leave google to think about that, I suppose they have made some fairly smart business moves in the past.
 

And this is part of a grander scheme of some hefty investment into green start-ups and renewable energy. 

Whilst we are on the subject, there are several servers running off renewable power in the US, but Green Energy Republic are struggling to find any in the UK. If anyone knows of one could you pass on a link, so we don’t have to google it. 

Green Energy Republic Team