谷歌的零碳大计（节选）

    随着双层巴士转入查尔斯顿路（Charleston Road），开始蜿蜒穿梭谷歌（Google）位于加利福尼亚州山景城（Mountain View, Calif.）的园区，我全身舒泰地坐在公务舱标准大小的座椅上，欣赏平滑的黑色皮革以及脚下毛绒灰色的地毯。宽敞的折叠桌伸展开来，摆放着我的笔记本电脑，它已经与车内的WiFi系统连接。这趟奢华双层巴士的单价为80万美元，是谷歌拥有和运营的73辆巴士之一。（该公司向外出租26辆。）每天这些班车都运送大约4,500名员工，相当于三分之一在谷歌园区（Googleplex，谷歌总部的名字）工作的人。

    事实上，谷歌提供的免费搭乘服务并不只是员工福利的一部分——它实际上还帮公司节省了资金。没错，每天有4,500人搭乘这些巴士上下班，从中节省2个小时用于工作，进而为公司提高生产力。但谷歌的巴士服务还有更深层次的意义。山景城的房地产价格较高。地下停车场的修建费用高达8.5万美元。如果谷歌要为每位巴士乘客修建一个停车位，那么总费用可能几乎达到4亿美元。这还不包括损失了将该片土地用以建造新办公大楼的机会成本。

    谷歌也已经在交通运输方面进行了其他投资。白天，如果某位谷歌员工需要出外办事或者到学校接生病的孩子，他可以使用停在园区里的52架电动和混合动力汽车。谷歌还鼓励员工驾驶电动车。据估计，谷歌已经支出300万至400万美元去安装395个充电器——这是美国最大的企业电动车基础设施。

    近年来，为能源问题寻找创造性的解决方案成了谷歌联合创始人兼首席执行官拉里•佩奇的一项首要任务。出于一些明显的原因——人口增长、资源日渐匮乏以及气候变化，他相信企业领域需要更加可持续地运作，同时决心打造全国首个零碳排放企业。这意味着该公司最终将非常节能，使用大量的清洁能源，因此不会排放温室气体——事实上这是非常难以办到的事情。专家们并不确定是否有可能一个企业能完全不排放碳，但是谷歌正在尝试尽可能达到这个目标。谷歌第八号员工厄尔斯•霍尔泽尔说：“随着我们成为更大的能源用户，我们希望确保我们不只制造问题，更能参与解决问题。”他担任高级副总裁，负责管理公司的绿色项目。

    为了达到这个大胆的零碳排放目标，谷歌将采取三管齐下的办法。首先，提高服务器群组、办公室大楼和通勤习惯的能源效率。（显然，这个等式并没有涵盖佩奇和另一位联合创始人谢尔盖•布林共同拥有的波音767飞机。）其次，截至目前，该公司向太阳能和风能发电商投资了大量资金——9.15亿美元，以增加清洁能源的供应。最后，该公司将购买足够的“碳抵消”以使公司（至少在理论上）实现碳中和，直到实现自己的目标。

    如果这项计划奏效，佩奇将为其他公司创造一个可供参考的蓝图，帮助它们减少各自使用的能源，更重要的是为公司省钱。但谷歌在这方面已经有过一些惨痛的教训。

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    As the double-decker bus turns onto Charleston Road and starts winding through Google's Mountain View, Calif., campus, I stretch out in the business-class-size seat, admiring the smoothness of the black leather and the plush gray carpeting at my feet. A spacious table expands to hold a laptop, which can connect to the vehicle's Wi-Fi system. This $800,000 luxury double-decker is one of 73 buses that Google owns and operates. (It leases 26 others.) Each day the fleet transports about 4,500 employees, or about a third of those working at the Googleplex, as the company's headquarters is known.

    It turns out that Google (GOOG) isn't offering a free ride simply as an employee perk -- the buses actually save the company money. Yes, there's the added productivity of 4,500 employees working an extra couple of hours each day while riding to and from work. But Google's bus service is about much more than that. Real estate in Mountain View is expensive. Underground parking spaces cost as much as $85,000 to construct. (Really!) If Google had to build a parking space for each of the bus riders, the price tag would run to almost $400 million. And that's not counting the lost opportunity cost of not using that land for new office buildings.

    Google has made other investments in transportation too. If, during the day, a Google-ite needs to run an errand or pick up a sick kid at school, he or she can hop into one of 52 electric and hybrid cars parked on campus. The company also encourages employees to drive electrics. It has spent an estimated $3 million to $4 million to install 395 chargers -- the largest corporate electric-vehicle infrastructure in the country.

    Finding creative solutions to energy issues has become a major priority for Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page in recent years. For the obvious reasons -- a growing population, increasingly scarce resources, and climate change -- he believes that the corporate world needs to operate more sustainably, and he is determined to build the nation's first zero-carbon company. This means a business that ultimately is so energy efficient and uses so much clean power that it emits no greenhouse gas -- a very tall order indeed. Experts aren't sure whether it's even possible for a company to emit no carbon, but Google is trying to come as close to that goal as possible. "As we became a bigger user of energy, we wanted to make sure we were not just part of the problem, but part of the solution," says Urs Hölzle, Google's employee No. 8 and a senior vice president who oversees the company's green initiatives.

    To reach its audacious zero-carbon goal, Google is taking a three-pronged approach. First, it's making its server farms, office buildings, and commuting habits more energy efficient. (Apparently Page's Boeing 767, which he owns with co-founder Sergey Brin, doesn't get counted in the equation.) Then the company is investing heavily -- $915 million to date -- in solar and wind producers to make clean energy more available. And finally it is buying enough carbon offsets to make the company carbon neutral -- at least on paper -- until it can meet its overall goal.

    If the plan works, Page will have created a blueprint that other companies can use to reduce their own energy use and -- as important -- save money at the same time. But Google has already learned some hard lessons.