A recent study by Stanford professor Jonathan Koomey claims that internet-giant Google uses about .01% of the world’s energy. However impressive, the number could be much higher.

Google–which now hosts billions of internet pages, maps, books, images and videos–has been trying to find novel approaches to data storage that will save money and energy. Data centers eat up an incredible amount of energy mostly because they require constant cooling to prevent the servers from overheating.

This first video (top), features Google’s newest data center in Hamina, Finland that uses seawater to passively cool its servers. No electricity is pulled off the grid for cooling.

The second video (below) shows the inside of a California data center several years ago. While Google was trying to use energy efficiently even then, the older video shows a model that may soon be phased out as more and more data is stored electronically and companies work simultaneously to reduce electricity consumption and save money.

The federal government has also become increasingly concerned with the energy use of data centers as it transfers more and more of its data to online databases.

In a recent Breaking Energy article, the editor of Breaking Gov describes various government initiatives to limit the costs from data centers: Feds Pull The Plug On Costly Data Centers.

AOL has also been working to reduce energy consumption of data centers by using a cloud computing model that stores information virtually. Read more: AOL on AOL: Energy Use Right Here At Home.