Google data centers: 100% renewable is just the beginning

I'm thrilled to announce that in 2017 Google will reach 100% renewable energy for our global operations — including both our data centers and offices.

This is a huge milestone. We were one of the first corporations to create large-scale, long-term contracts to buy renewable energy directly; we signed our first agreement to purchase all the electricity from a 114-megawatt wind farm in Iowa, in 2010.

Today, we are the world's largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy.

That's bigger than many large utilities and more than twice as much as the 1.21 gigawatts it took to send Marty McFly back in time.

To reach this goal we'll be directly buying enough wind and solar electricity annually to account for every unit of electricity our operations consume, globally. And we're focusing on creating new energy from renewable sources, so we only buy from projects that are funded by our purchases.

Data centers are the backbone of the internet, processing and storing huge amounts of information. Our engineers have spent years perfecting Google's data centers, making them 50 percent more energy efficient than the industry average.

But we still need a lot of energy to process trillions of Google searches every year, play more than 400 hours of YouTube videos uploaded every minute, and power the products and services that our users depend on. That's why we began purchasing renewable energy — to reduce our carbon footprint and address climate change. But it also makes business sense.

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.

Our 20 renewable energy projects also help support communities, from Grady County, OK, to Rutherford County, NC, to the Atacama Region of Chile to municipalities in Sweden.

To date, our purchasing commitments will result in infrastructure investments of more than $3.5 billion globally, about two-thirds of that in the United States. These projects also generate tens of millions of dollars per year in revenue to local property owners, and tens of millions more to local and national governments in tax revenue.

So, we're on track to match our global energy consumption on an annual basis by next year. But this is just the first step. As we look to the immediate future, we'll continue to pursue these direct contracts as we grow, with an even greater focus on regional renewable energy purchases in places where we have data centers and significant operations.

Since the wind doesn't blow 24 hours a day, we'll also broaden our purchases to a variety of energy sources that can enable renewable power, every hour of every day.

Our ultimate goal is to create a world where everyone — not just Google — has access to clean energy. For more on these next steps, read ourwhite paper.

Operating our business in an environmentally sustainable way has been a core value from the beginning, and we're always working on new ideas to make sustainability a reality — like enabling the building of healthy workplaces and creating a living, breathing dashboard for the planet.

We've reported our carbon footprint and published information on our sustainability programs for many years in white papers, blog posts, and on our website. Now, we've put all this information together in a new Environmental Report.

You can also check out our new environment website, where we share stories of how we are finding new ways to do more while using less. Most of our on-campus sustainability initiatives were started by a few passionate Googlers, and have now grown into company-wide efforts.

From the solar panels on our roofs to our bike-to-work program, these initiatives sit at the heart of our company culture and help both us and our users reduce our impact on the environment.

The science tells us that tackling climate change is an urgent global priority. We believe the private sector, in partnership with policy leaders, must take bold steps and that we can do so in a way that leads to growth and opportunity. And we have a responsibility to do so - to our users and the environment.

We have lots of progress left to make, but these achievements we're announcing today feel like a breath of fresh air. Now, back to work.

Article by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure, Google