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In 2017, Google claimed to be 100% carbon neutral. In 2021, they proudly reclaimed the crown by purchasing 100 percent of renewable energy to match its net global electricity consumption.
While Amazon took the Climate Pledge in 2019 for 80% renewable energy by 2024 & 100% by 2030, Google quietly achieved the 100% mark by 2017. To ensure transparency, Google publishes annual environmental and supplementary sustainability reports that are free to download. You see attaining a 100 % mark is no easy task. The amount of job done at Google Data centers add up to the consumption which delays the entire process. This might have turned down some enthusiasts who were looking forward to (or rather waiting for an opportunity to) inculpate.
But does Google intend otherwise? Let's see.
Google Aims a Sustainable future
Let’s start with the fact that in 2011, Google was one of the first tech companies to sign a first Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) for wind energy, which is a contract between a clean energy generator and a clean energy customer. It's clear that Google does seek a future based on renewable energy.
As Google strives to eliminate its carbon emissions by 2030, it still aims high to run on carbon-free energy 24/7 at all data centers. By promoting a healthy, sustainable work environment and minimizing waste generation, Google contributes to a sustainable environment. In addition, they are even founding members of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development's Circular Electronics Partnership.
What do Google mean by Carbon neutral?
The amount of electricity used by Google's data centers increases every day as global business and internet use expand. Thus, when Google says it is carbon neutral, it means that it buys equal amounts of carbon offsets and uses renewable energy to reduce its net operating carbon emissions. Google partners are already using Google AI & ML programs to drive important climate and conservation efforts for restoring the climate.
We recommend a visit to Google Cloud’s “Partner stories” to understand how they work together for a better, cleaner & greener future.
Aim for a clean grid
By 2030, Google aims to operate globally 24/7 on carbon-free energy by emphasizing on efficient data centres and power usage effectiveness (PUE).
Google’s head of Clean energy & Carbon development for data centers, Maud Texier, ensures that along with hardware & software developments, it has invested in a machine learning program developed by DeepMind that predicts when to run heat pumps to cool data centers. Google even acts upon & accelerates the transition of the regional grid to achieve a clean grid. Additionally, Google uses certain algorithms to determine where its data centers should be located.
The Circular Google
Google is taking the global challenge of building a circular economy to maximize the reuse of finite resources across its operations, products, and supply chains. By incorporating circularity into their designs, they believe things created today can become the resources of tomorrow and enable reuse, repair, & recovery. In fact, Google has committed to incorporating circularity into its global data centers.
Carbon Footprint & Active Assist
In 2021, Google launched Carbon Footprint, a new feature to Active Assist that analysis how customers use its Cloud. Active assist has always been a part of Google Cloud’s AIOps solution with tools like Policy Intelligence, NI & Predictive Autoscaler. But now Google with the launch of Carbon Footprint has created a field to display the carbon emissions associated with any project.
Carbon Sense Suite, the bigger step indeed
Google launched its Carbon Sense Suite in Feb 2022, a collection of tools along with Carbon Footprint with the intention to add other future works to create a detailed picture of gross Carbon emissions of any customer’s Google Cloud usage. Once the customers are running on Google Cloud and want to reduce the GCE, they can take action to optimize their usage. And customers who want to keep their data private can opt out of the program.
The Unattended project recommender
Under the “Unattended project recommender”, customers are provided insights into all the projects in their organizations. Google uses machine learning to identify piled-up idle & unattended projects. It also estimates the weight in kilograms of CO2 reduced per month by removing idle projects.
On the go, we know
While businesses like Amazon have their data centers run on natural resources like coal & natural gas, many Google data centers are unable to switch to renewable energy which is making many communities question Google’s intentions.
Giving them the benefit of doubt and assuming (as per the records) that they aim for a better and faster result, we wait for Google to come up with programs that address this issue. As Greenpeace reports, with the rise in demand for data storage, the cloud market has also seen an increase in the demand for electricity from coal and other dirty sources of energy.
But we rely on numbers and facts, right?
Hence,
In 2020, Google issued $5.75 billion in sustainability bonds, the largest sustainability or green bond issuance by any company in history at the time.
In 2021, Google matched 66% of its data center electricity use with regional carbon-free sources, on an hourly basis.
By 2022, Google introduced eco-friendly routing in Google Maps, new features to book flights or purchase appliances that have lower carbon footprints, and Nest Renew, a program to support clean energy from home.
And the recent releases make it clear that Sustainability is a stated priority for Google.
Why do We care?
Honestly, we are no Google advocate but surely are intrigued by the fact that the biggest company in the cloud market opts for carbon emission plans and the use of renewable energy. Firstly, as a human, anything remotely related to a greener & sustainable future concerns us. And secondly, as a Branding Agency, we look forward to leveraging the programs for our client's future strategies for Sustainable branding.
*Intrigued to know how Sustainable Branding works? Stay Tuned.