It’s no surprise that Google (News - Alert) uses a gaggle of servers – about 900,000 at current count. But how much current do those servers consume?

In a white paper released this week – and initially prepared for The New York Times by Stamford Professor Jonathon Koomey and Analytics Press – the author says that, when you look at data centers worldwide, Google is not that greedy: It uses 0.01 percent annually of world electricity.

That still may seem like a lot, but, “electricity used in U.S. data centers in 2010 likely accounted for between 1.7 percent and 2.2 percent of global electricity consumption,” said Koomey. “While Google is a high-profile user of computer servers, less than 1 percent of electricity used by data centers worldwide was attributable to that company’s data center operations.”

Indeed, since 2009, Google Energy LLC has been able to “procure large volumes of renewable energy by participating in the wholesale market,” states a Google site. “We are purchasing clean, renewable wind energy sufficient to power several of our large data centers in a continuing effort to green our operations.”

Specifically, Google LLC has completed two wind power generation agreements, both from NextEra Energy Resources, the company said. The first was for 114 megawatts (MW) of wind generation from the Story County II facility in Iowa; and the second, for 100.8 MW of wind generation from the Minco II facility in Oklahoma .

Google also has invested in the Atlantic Wind Connection, a project that would run electrical lines as far as 20 miles offshore from Virginia to New Jersey. The initial phase of the project would be capable of delivering 2,000 MW of wind energy – enough to power about 500,000 homes.

Finally, while we’re talking about servers and energy, who else is in the big leagues? According to an article in Data Center Knowledge, the following companies have huge server farms, as well: Microsoft, Amazon, eBay (News - Alert), Intel, Yahoo, GoDaddy, HP/EDS, and IBM.

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