Q&A: Gary Demasi, director of global infrastructure, Google

As Google has grown from a tiny startup into a technology giant, it has also become a giant consumer of energy, thanks to its global array of data centres. The California-based firm says it consumed 2,675 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2011, which means that its average continuous power use was about 305 megawatts (MW). By comparison, that would be enough to power 230,000 average US residential utility consumers, based on data from the US Energy Information Administration.

Google’s growing