
Google has recently announced that it has achieved its objective of running all of its clouds with renewable energy – an objective that the company set out to achieve little over a year ago. As a matter of fact, Google has actually generated more renewable energy than it needs to power its data centres and offices from the use of solar and wind power.
Statement From Urs Hölzle Of Google
In light of the recent achievement, Google’s Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure made the following statement in a blog post – “During 2017, across the globe, for every kilowatt-hour of electricity Google consumed, we purchased a kilowatt-hour of renewables from a wind or solar farm that was built specifically for Google.”
Hölzle went on to explain that global giant is taking its responsibilities even further by entering into agreements to buy a further three gigawatts of power from renewable sources of energy.
The Company is Replacing Every Kilowatt-hour with a Green Equivalent
Not only does the investment in renewable energy sources mean that the company is making a sustainable effort to reduce its carbon impact, it is also financing the renewable economy, with current contracts contributing more than $3 billion in new capital investment around the globe.
However, there’s still some way to go until Google is fully operating on renewable energy sources.
Although Hölzle stated that Google adds a kilowatt hour of energy to the grid for 60 minutes that it spends, it might not even be used to directly power its own data centres or offices, because the projects it supports may be in different geographical areas to its facilities, or the power generated at a different time.
Google explained it will continue to invest in renewable sources as product demand continues to grow. It will also continue to look for new opportunities to help markets that are not using sources of renewable energy to operate.