Happy 20th Birthday To A Green Champion
Today marks 20 years of Google’s existence. For many, the tech giant is simply the gateway to a vast archive of facts and memories. For those who pay closer attention to its business dealings, the company also invests billions to find new ways to use the power of computers: it’s developing robots, virtual reality gear and self-driving cars.
But many people forget that Google has been using the same approach in sustainability — spreading its wealth in a variety of projects to cut its waste and carbon footprint, initiatives which may one day generate profits.
Google is big on reducing energy use at its data centers. Another often-cited effort: the company is a big wind and solar energy investor, having signed 2.5 gigawatts worth of contracts around the world and, additionally, committed to investing $2.5bn in renewable energy, including owning stakes in power plants.
In 2010, Google started buying renewable energy at scale and has become the largest non-utility corporate buyer of renewable energy. This translates into having purchased 2.5 gigawatts of renewable energy which is the equivalent of taking 1 million cars off the road.
The internet giant first made its pledge to be powered solely by renewables back in 2012. In the six years since then the company has embarked on an aggressive strategy to rid itself of any reliance on energy produced from fossil fuels.
Currently Google uses less than 0.01% of the world’s electricity. They purchase green power nearest to their data centers in a bid to reach their 100% renewable energy goal. This clean electricity is bought directly from wind and solar farms closest to the centers.
Get all that?
Google to work on sustainability. The tech giant has a decentralized approach: there have been teams embedded in different business units that look at ways to reduce energy use, emissions and waste and to boost productivity and revenues. For instance, there’s a team called Geo for Good that investigates the use of maps, data and machine learning to solve environmental problems, such as creating databases and software to monitor the health of tropical forests around the world or track illegal fishing. There’s also a team that works on serving sustainably grown food within the company.
Major Companies Should Continue to Set a High Bar
This is not an easy challenge, but it’s also not impossible. It’s probably as difficult as the goal to achieve 100% procurement of renewables seemed in 2010, when Google embarked on this mission. Google addressed these concepts in a white paper released in 2016, but mostly in a future tense. Now it is up to Google and other visionary organizations and individuals to make this happen.
Watch the video below on how Google went green
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