As artificial intelligence reshapes the search engine landscape, Europe’s eco-friendly search engine Ecosia is navigating a delicate balance between technological innovation and environmental responsibility.
At Lisbon’s Web Summit, I sat down with Christian Kroll, CEO and founder of Ecosia, to talk about the shifting dynamics in search technology and the environmental cost of generative AI.
The Berlin-based company is a bit of an anomaly: as well as being the most used European product in a sector dominated by American companies, it is the largest not-for-profit search engine in the world. Small in terms of market share: around 0.30% in Europe and o.09% globally, but unique in terms of business model; since its launch, in 2009, the company has used advertising revenues to fund the planting of over 218 million trees, with projects ranging from desert restoration in Burkina Faso to forest protection in Indonesia.
Yet, the world of search is changing rapidly, and demand for AI integration in search engines is transforming the industry, especially as AI-powered tools like ChatGPT have reset user expectations. Generative AI, particularly large language models, requires immense processing power, both for training and deployment.
For a company like Ecosia, which was founded on a commitment to sustainability, this presents a unique challenge: how to keep up with technological advancements without compromising its environmental mission.
“We’re seeing a push to make search smarter and more conversational,” Kroll says. “But the cost of this intelligence is significant—especially in terms of electricity and carbon emissions.”
Ecosia has long worked to offset its energy consumption by building renewable energy plants, setting a bold standard by generating three times the energy it uses. “We’re not just aiming to be carbon-neutral; we want to be carbon-negative,” Kroll says. “For every kilowatt-hour we consume, we add three times as much clean energy back to the grid, actively displacing fossil fuels.”
Despite these efforts, Kroll admits that scaling AI in search comes with considerable environmental risks. Training a large language model (LLM), for instance, can consume as much energy as a small town might use over several years. While day-to-day queries on an AI-enhanced search platform are less energy-intensive, the initial training phase consumes vast resources.
“We’re not training our own models from scratch,” he says. “But even using these models requires considerable energy. It’s a dilemma because as AI advances, the environmental impact inevitably grows.” Kroll stresses that every company adopting AI should take these costs into account, especially as global electricity demands rise.
Kroll’s company is also working with Qwant, a French search engine with which Ecosia recently formed a joint venture, to develop its own search index, a key component in combining traditional search capabilities with generative AI capabilities. “An LLM is generated maybe a few months ago or sometimes even a few years ago, and they don’t have the recent information. You need to combine an LLM with an index, and we want to make sure we have access and be able to combine those two things,” Kroll notes.
As Kroll sees it, building a sustainable and competitive search engine is about much more than just AI. A robust index—an organized database of web information—is essential for any search engine. Yet, only a handful of tech giants like Google and Microsoft own and control these indexes, which has allowed them to dominate the search landscape for years. “The index is really the backbone of search,” he says. “Without one, even the best AI will fall short.”
Kroll’s vision is underpinned by a broader concern for Europe’s digital autonomy. As he points out, dependence on American tech giants poses both economic and geopolitical risks. “We have been relying on Putin for energy and we’re relying on Trump for IT. This is not a good position to be in,” he says.
So far, Ecosia has relied on a mix of Bing and Google search results, to serve its users; by developing, together with Qwant, its own index, Ecosia aims to break free from its dependence on larger search providers, ensuring that it can deliver relevant results without relying on Microsoft or Alphabet.
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) may help achieve that. The legislation aims to promote fair competition by compelling dominant tech companies to open their platforms, make data more accessible to smaller players, and provide mobile device users with a clear choice of search engines during initial device setup.
Kroll sees this as a major step forward for competition and innovation in the tech industry. “If implemented effectively, the DMA could level the playing field,” he explains. “Right now, smaller search engines face huge barriers because they don’t have access to the data and user behavior necessary to train their algorithms or refine their indexes. The DMA will help change that.”
The conversation in Lisbon also touched on Ecosia’s community-driven approach to sustainability. Unlike other players, who sometimes seem to promote green initiatives mostly as public relations strategies, Ecosia has made reforestation and environmental support central to its business model.
Profits from the search engine go directly into tree-planting initiatives around the world. “Trees aren’t just carbon sinks,” Kroll points out. “They stabilize ecosystems, provide income for communities, and prevent land degradation. They’re a comprehensive solution to many of the challenges we face.”
In regions like the Amazon and Indonesia, Ecosia collaborates with locals to plant economically valuable trees, which provide an alternative to deforestation-driven income. “If we can give people a way to make a living from planting trees instead of cutting them down, we can protect forests much more effectively.”
Kroll’s personal journey reflects the values he has instilled in Ecosia. Originally driven by a desire for financial success, his travels in India and Nepal altered his perspective. He witnessed environmental degradation and economic inequality firsthand, leading him to rethink his goals.
Ultimately, what Ecosia is trying to do, is simply prioritizing long-term impact over short-term gains. As Kroll puts it, it’s easy to get caught up in the race for the next big feature: but at what cost?
