Powering a clean energy revolution

Reducing our Carbon Footprint to Zero

Our business powers the platforms that drive the Internet. With hundreds of millions of Google users, it takes extensive computer infrastructure to keep our tools and services running. And that takes a lot of electricity. Generating that electricity requires energy, and as our business grows, we want to make sure we minimize our impact on the Earth's climate. So we’re taking every step we can to produce electricity using renewable energy resources that don't add to the production of greenhouse gas emissions.

As part of that responsibility, Google has committed to being carbon-neutral for 2007 and beyond. To honor our pledge, we’re taking a three-step approach. First, we’re increasing the energy efficiency of our own operations. Second, we’re actively pursuing the use and creation of clean and renewable sources of electricity. Third, for the emissions we can’t reduce directly at this time, we’re investing in projects that help offset carbon generated.

Improving Efficiency

Efficiency and innovation are central Google values. From our very first servers to our latest-generation data centers, extracting maximum performance per watt of delivered power has allowed the scale and scope of our services to grow exponentially. It’s good for the environment and good for business, too.

Our data centers use half as much energy as a typical industry data center to power the same amount of computing. We have achieved this improvement over industry standards through the use of increasingly efficient power supplies and evaporative cooling technology. We’ve also started to share some of what we’ve learned about efficient computing with others by forming the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, joining other industry leaders to spread the word about reducing the amount of electricity wasted by computers and servers.

In addition to continually working to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with running the servers at our data centers, we have taken actions to directly reduce the environmental impact associated with other aspects of our operations as well. As a first step, we’re gradually retrofitting our global offices with high-efficiency lighting, optimizing our use of natural light, and using better building control systems. We’re also looking to reduce – and eventually eliminate – the use of incandescent light bulbs in our global offices and replace them with more efficient fluorescent bulbs. We’re planning to expand our use of power management software for desktop computers, as well as motion sensors and other lighting controls that further reduce our power usage. Finally, Google is in the process of performing extensive energy audits to better understand precisely how much electricity we consume – and in what ways – so that we can optimize our systems to demand as little energy as possible.

Utilizing Renewable Power

Renewable energy is a critical component of a clean energy future and Google has set a goal of creating 50 megawatts of new renewable energy-generating capacity by 2012. (That’s enough electricity to power 50,000 homes.) And with the November 2007 announcement of our new renewable energy R&D group, Google’s co-founder Larry Page upped the ante, saying, "Our goal is to build 1 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal, and we are optimistic that this can be done within years, not decades."

We’re eager to use more on-site renewable power both at home and around the world. In Mountain View, CA, for example, we currently have a 1.6 megawatt (MW) solar panel installation that generates 30% of the peak power necessary to fuel the buildings on which they are located. In addition to reducing our carbon footprint, the solar panels make good business sense; they’ll pay for themselves in 7 ½ years. And at our Google office in Hyderabad, India, we're planning to install solar modules that heat all the water for the building.

Additionally, when buying power for our data centers, Google will use a “shadow price” for carbon. This voluntary pricing of carbon will enable us to calculate a more accurate cost of power as one of the key criteria in site selection for our data centers. The cost of carbon is not yet recognized by the U.S. market, but may soon become so through legislation.

Pricing carbon is an important tool to reducing the financial risk that our energy investments face. Moreover, when evaluating power options, using a shadow price for carbon puts renewable energy on a more level playing field.

Investing in Carbon Offset Projects

At this time, our work to improve efficiency and generate renewable energy doesn’t cover Google’s entire carbon footprint. That’s why we also fund projects around the world that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, we contribute to projects that use currently-accepted methods of measuring emission reductions. That way, we can accurately quantify the environmental benefits of a given project. We also look for projects that provide a clear plan for monitoring and verification of results by third parties so we can be certain that the volume of offsets we purchase is sufficient to fully address our carbon footprint.

The offset projects in which we invest go beyond “business as usual.” That means we look for project activity that would not be viable without carbon financing. Through this requirement, we ensure that our investment makes a real difference in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

An example of a project that we have selected is the installation of improved animal waste management systems in small livestock operations in Mexico and Brazil. Normally these operations store waste runoff in open lagoons, which emit methane and nitrous oxide, both potent greenhouse gases. Our funding helps make it possible for anaerobic digesters to be installed, which capture and flare the biogas produced while simultaneously improving local air quality and reducing land and water contamination.

On their own, carbon offsets are not capable of creating the kinds of fundamental changes to global energy infrastructure that will be necessary to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions over the long-term. But the projects to which we contribute do offer real and measurable emissions reductions that allow Google to take full responsibility for our footprint today.