For over 10 years, Google has been running as a carbon neutral company. Their goals have been to become more energy efficient with what they already have in operation, and to add in clean energy sources. Now, based on an environmental report published this month, they’re taking a huge step forward. All of the corporation’s offices and data centers are about to be fully powered by just renewable energy.

According to the report, they’ll be at 100 percent renewable energy by the end of 2017. In order to reach that, they’ve invested nearly $2.5 billion in wind and solar with a total capacity of 3.7 gigawatts. The boom began with the purchase of a 114-megawatt wind farm in Iowa back in 2010.

Last December, Google first announced their goals of reaching this milestone. With so many people using their services, they needed to find a way to sustainably operate their servers and to reduce their very large carbon footprint. At that time, they’d already reached an impressive 2.6 gigawatts of renewable power from wind and solar energy sources.

Urs Holzle, the senior vice president of the technical infrastructure at Google, explains how the continued lower costs of renewable energy and its stability helped the company set their goal and achieve it, saying, “Over the last six years, the cost of wind and solar came down 60 percent and 80 percent, respectively, proving that renewables are increasingly becoming the lowest cost option. Electricity costs are one of the largest components of our operating expenses at our data centers, and having a long-term stable cost of renewable power provides protection against price swings in energy.”

Not only has the company improved the infrastructure, but they’ve helped businesses and consumers through their technology. Project Sunroof has been able to scan and observe over 43 million US rooftops in 42 states to inform homeowners interested in solar panels. Businesses that have moved over to Google’s products have cut their own energy and carbon emission use by up to 85 percent.

Google has already accomplished zero net emissions last year. Over the past five years, there has been over a 55 percent decrease in carbon intensity based on their revenue and full-time employee usage. In their main headquarters in the Bay Area, they’ve reduced drinking water by 40 percent and 85 percent of their landfill waste was recycled in 2016. Landfill diversion has actually been maximized at six of their data centers.

While being able to achieve full sustainability in energy usage is impressive, the report details how much power they’ve been able to cut back on altogether. Google’s data centers use just half of the energy when compared to others from major corporations. They’ve also been able to deliver over three times as much computing power while using the same amount of energy.

Source: http://www.greenmatters.com/news/2017/10/13/21lGrG/google-fully-operate-renewable-energy?recirc

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