Next week at COP27, global leaders will gather in Egypt to build momentum for climate action. Climate change is one of humanity’s most urgent challenges, and this decade is critical in setting the world on a path to a sustainable future. Google is committed to reducing our own emissions and using technology to help everyone make sustainable choices.

Today, we’re releasing a paper that shares updates on the work we have been doing as part of our third decade of climate action. Here’s a look at our progress and ambitions.

Built to be sustainable

Sustainability has always been a core value for Google, and we know taking action starts with operating our business more sustainably.

Last year we announced our goal of achieving net-zero emissions across our operations and value chain — including our consumer hardware products — by 2030. We aim to reduce 50% of our combined scope 1[dd5395], scope 2[c32b8a], and scope 3[19a617]absolute emissions (versus our 2019 baseline) before 2030, and plan to invest in nature-based and technology-based carbon removal solutions to neutralize our remaining emissions. There are three ways we are working towards this goal: advancing carbon-free energy (CFE), reducing emissions within our value chain, and addressing our residual emissions with carbon removal and other solutions.

Our net zero goal builds on two decades of climate action at Google. We started purchasing renewable energy in 2010, and in 2017 we became the first major company to match 100% of our annual electricity use with renewable energy purchases. We have continued to do so for five consecutive years, and in 2020 we set the even more ambitious goal of operating our data centers and office campuses on 24/7 CFE by 2030.

Accelerate action through partners

While we’re committed to reaching our goals, our impact is far greater when we work together. That’s why we collaborate with thousands of partners across multiple industries — from cities and governments to companies and nonprofits — to advance sustainability and climate progress.

Over half of the global population lives in cities, and urban areas account for over two-thirds of global energy consumption and more than 70% of global carbon emissions. To help reduce these emissions, we aim to help more than 500 cities and local governments reduce an aggregate of 1 gigaton of carbon emissions annually by 2030. We are working to achieve this through tools like our Environmental Insights Explorer, which empowers cities and regions with actionable data and insights to reduce global emissions, and Project Green Light, an AI tool that provides recommendations for city planners to optimize traffic light timing to reduce stop-and-go traffic.

Likewise, many of the world’s biggest brands are working to operate more sustainably. Through Google Cloud, we’re helping customers minimize environmental impact. This summer we announced Google Cloud Ready - Sustainability designation to showcase partners that are committed to helping organizations accelerate their sustainability programs.

We are also building tools to strengthen communities’ response to extreme weather events. For example, our forecasting initiative provides flood alerts and information to at-risk communities. During Pakistan’s severe flooding this year, we provided nationwide SOS alerts with links to the latest information from government authorities.

Empowering everyone to make more sustainable choices

The billions of people who use our products and services are looking for ways to live more sustainably, and we want to make it easier for them to do so. In 2022, Google searches reached all-time highs for terms including “rooftop solar power,” “solar energy,” “electric bicycles,” and “electric cars.”

Last year, we rolled out eco-friendly routing on Google Maps in the U.S. and Canada, and this year it expanded to 40 countries across Europe. This tool gets people to their destinations as quickly as possible while minimizing fuel consumption. Already it has helped avoid an estimate of more than half a million metric tons of carbon emissions — that’s equivalent to taking approximately 100,000 fuel-based cars off the road[31542c].

Beyond getting from place to place, we’re making it easier for people to build a clean energy future from their homes. As of this month, anyone in the continental U.S. can join Nest Renew, which automatically shifts their energy consumption to the times of day when local grid electricity is cleaner or less expensive.

As we work to provide products and services that help people make sustainable choices and reduce their carbon footprints, we’ll continue improving our ability to measure the individual and collective impact of these decisions. This is important not only for Google, but also for the growing number of companies offering solutions to help their customers reduce emissions.

A more sustainable future, for all

This year, we’ve seen major steps forward on climate policy in the U.S., Europe, and other regions. We are excited about the potential of new policy measures and corporate commitments that will help us reach historic emissions reductions in the next decade. The conversations at COP27 will be a critical moment to continue building momentum and move from pledges to progress.

Our aim is to make every day more sustainable through our operations, partnerships and products. We’re energized by the progress we’ve made so far, and more motivated than ever to do our part to accelerate the transition to a more sustainable future for all.

The climate and energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 represent the most comprehensive investments to combat climate change in U.S. history. These investments offer the opportunity to bring about a renaissance of American-made clean energy and renewed energy security, putting the country on a path to historic emissions reductions by the end of this decade.

At Google, we’ve set a goal to achieve net zero emissions across all of our operations and value chain by 2030. Our net zero goal also includes a moonshot to operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy for all of our data centers and campuses. The climate and energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will provide the glide path to the clean electricity resources needed to decarbonize U.S. grids and reach these goals. We’re founding members of the 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact, a coalition of over 70 companies united in this pursuit, and I’m confident that with the tailwinds on climate and energy provided by these policy measures, that number will grow.

We’ve also integrated sustainability into our core products, like helping drivers and air passengers find fuel-efficient routes in Google Maps and Google Flights or giving homeowners the tools to efficiently heat and cool their house with a Nest Thermostat. It’s our goal to make the sustainable choice the easier choice. The clean energy and climate provisions in this bill will help amplify those small daily choices by making it easier for citizens to adopt clean electric vehicles and upgrade their homes to be more energy efficient.

Climate change is the most urgent challenge of our time. This historic climate legislation will help the country tackle that challenge, build energy resilience and power the industries of tomorrow.

In 2020, as part of our third decade of climate action, we established a bold set of goals to help build a carbon-free future for everyone. Today on Earth Day, we’re sharing recent progress we’ve made including new investments to help partners address climate change, product updates that allow everyone to make sustainable choices and highlights from our journey to net zero.

Helping our partners address climate change

To provide deeper insights into climate change data — like increased food insecurity, the nexus of health and climate and extreme weather events — we need to enable everyone to create solutions. We’ve continued to provide organizations, policymakers, researchers and more with the data, technology and resources they need to address climate change. Today we announced that Data Commons — our open-source platform built to organize public data and enable standardized, universal access to anyone — is now one of the world's largest knowledge graphs on sustainability. Data Commons has grown to include more than 100 data sources about the climate, health, food, crops, shelter, emissions and more.

Other initiatives we’ve recently announced to help partners include:

• A Google.org Sustainability Seed Fund in Asia Pacific: This new $6 million fund provides organizations in areas experiencing the brunt of climate change with additional resources to address issues like air quality, water preservation and renewable energy access.
• Our research shows, 75% of companies think technology will play a key role in their ability to reach sustainability goals: Our recent Google Cloud survey of nearly 1,500 executives across 16 countries found that sustainability tops business priorities, but few business leaders know how to begin or measure impact.
• Helping build a free carbon calculator for businesses: For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) finding the resources to measure and manage emissions is challenging. We partnered with the Sweden-based company Normative to provide funding and support to develop a free Business Carbon Calculator that is now available through the UN Race to Zero backed SME Climate Hub.

Helping everyone make more sustainable choices

Individuals are also looking for ways to take care of the planet. We’ve been looking at building more ways for our products to give people access to the information and tools needed to make more sustainable choices.

Today, when you go to Google.com, you’ll see timelapse imagery from Google Earth Timelapse and other environmental organizations that illustrates the effects of climate change. This is part of our ongoing efforts to spotlight the impact of climate disasters and help people learn what actions they can take to minimize the effects. Last October, we partnered with the United Nations to make it easier for people to find climate change information. When you search for ‘climate change’ in certain languages, you’ll see information panels and visuals on the causes and effects of climate change and individual actions they can take to live more sustainably. This was already available in English, French and Spanish, and today we expanded to include Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Thai and Vietnamese.

Here are more ways our products are helping people make sustainable choices:

• Saving energy with Nest: Since Nest launched its first smart thermostat over ten years ago, it has helped people save nearly 100 billion kilowatt-hours of energy — that’s enough energy to light up the entire planet for ten days! Now compatible Nest thermostats can do even more with Nest Renew, a thermostat service announced last year in the U.S. When Nest Renew customers take actions at home that save energy, they earn ‘Leafs’. Once customers reach Leaf milestones, they can vote to direct funds to one of our Energy Impact Program partners, Elevate and GRID Alternatives. These funds have gone toward energy-efficient upgrades to affordable housing in Chicago and the expansion of solar installation programs in California. Nest Renew is currently available in early preview, sign up to join the waitlist.
• More sustainable transportation options: Over ten years ago, cycling directions came to Google Maps. Today, it’s available in over 30 countries. In 2021 alone we added over 170,000 kilometers of bike lanes and bikeable roads, bringing more options to people looking for sustainable transportation alternatives.

Building a carbon-free future at Google

Lastly, we’ve always believed that to enable others we need to be leaders in the way we address our impact on the planet. In October, we set a goal to achieve net-zero emissions across all of our operations and value chain, including our consumer hardware products, by 2030. We aim to reduce the majority of our emissions (versus our 2019 baseline) before 2030, and plan to invest in nature-based and technology-based carbon removal solutions to neutralize our remaining emissions.

We’ve recently shared more on how we’re driving toward net zero:

• 24/7 carbon-free energy priorities: For emissions associated with powering our data centers and offices, we have an ambitious goal to operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030. This will require new technology to help with grid decarbonization, like our first-ever battery-based system for backup power at a hyperscale data center that is now operational in Belgium. Additionally, governments will need policies that speed up the transition to clean energy. Last week, we published a roadmap outlining policy priorities ​​that accelerate the decarbonization of electricity grids across the world and our commitment to advancing them.
• Investing in carbon removals and carbon markets innovation: Beyond our value chain, we’ll build on our leadership in high-impact methane reduction and destruction projects. We’ll also invest in emerging companies developing technology-based and nature-based carbon removal solutions, like our recent $200 million limited partnership in Frontier. And we will help strengthen carbon markets through our Google.org contribution to Gold Standard’s digitization efforts and our $2 million contribution to the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Markets.

We all have to act now and act together if we’re going to avert the worst effects of climate change. At Google, one of the most powerful things we can do is build technology that allows us, partners and individuals to take meaningful action. We plan to continue this critical work and do what we can to protect the planet.

I grew up in Muir Beach, California, and was fortunate to spend my childhood exploring its beautiful forests and streams. Today, these delicate ecosystems are threatened as the entire west coast of the U.S. is experiencing one of the worst droughts in recorded history. Unfortunately, this problem extends beyond the stretch of coastline I call home. Climate change is exacerbating water scarcity challenges around the world as places suffer from diminished rainfall — from Brazil's semi-arid region to Sub-saharan Africa. At the same time, we’ve seen strong storms bring devastating floods to places like the eastern U.S., central China, and western Germany.

Last September, we announced our third and most ambitious decade of climate action and laid out our plan toward a carbon-free future. Building on this commitment, we are pledging to a water stewardship target to replenish more water than we consume by 2030 and support water security in communities where we operate. This means Google will replenish 120% of the water we consume, on average, across our offices and data centers. We’re focusing on three areas: enhancing our stewardship of water resources across Google office campuses and data centers, replenishing our water use and improving watershed health and ecosystems in water-stressed communities; sharing technology and tools that help everyone predict, prevent and recover from water stress.

Managing the water we use responsibly

We use water to cool the data centers that make products like Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps and Search possible. Over the years, we've taken steps to address and improve our operational water sustainability. For example, we deployed technology that uses reclaimed wastewater to cool our data center in Douglas County, Georgia. At our office campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area, we worked with ecologists and landscape architects to develop an ecological design strategy and habitat guidelines to improve the resiliency of landscapes and nearby watershed health. This included implementing drip irrigation, using watering systems that adjust to local weather conditions, and fostering diverse landscapes on our campuses that can withstand the stresses of climate change. 

Our water stewardship journey will involve continuously enhancing our water use and consumption. At our data centers, we’ll identify opportunities to use freshwater alternatives where possible — whether that's seawater or reclaimed wastewater. When it comes to our office campuses, we’re looking to use more on-site water sources — such as collected stormwater and treated wastewater — to meet our non-potable water needs like landscape irrigation, cooling and toilet flushing.

Investing in community water security and healthy ecosystems

Water security is an issue that goes beyond our operations, and it’s not something we can solve alone. In partnership with others, we’ll invest in community projects that replenish 120% of the water we consume, on average, across all Google offices and data centers, and that improve the health of the local watersheds where our office campuses and data centers are located. 

Typically, the water we all use every day comes from local watersheds — areas of land where local precipitation collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as a river, bay or other receiving body of water. There are several ways to determine whether a watershed is sustainable including measuring water quality and availability and community access to the water. 

We’ll focus on solutions that address local water and watershed challenges. For example, we’re working with the Colorado River Indian Tribes project to reduce the amount of water that is withdrawn from Lake Mead reservoir on the Colorado River in Nevada and Arizona. In Dublin, Ireland, we’re installing rainwater harvesting systems to reduce stormwater flows to improve water quality in the River Liffey and the Dublin Bay. And in Los Angeles, we’re investing in efforts to remove water-thirsty invasive species to help the nearby ecosystem in the San Gabriel mountains.

Using data tools to predict and prevent water stress

Communities, policymakers and planners all need tools to measure and predict water availability and water needs. We’re dedicated to working with partners to make those tools and technologies universally accessible. To that end, we’ve recently worked with others on these water management efforts: 

• Partnered with the United Nations Environment Programme and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) to create the Freshwater Ecosystems Explorer. This tool tracks surface water changes over time on a national and local scale. 

• Co-developed the web application OpenET with academic and government researchers to make satellite-based data that shows how and where water moves when it evaporates available to farmers, landowners and water managers.

• Provided Google.org funding for Global Water Watch and Windward Fund’s BlueConduit. Global Water Watch provides real-time indicators for current and future water management needs, and was built in partnership with Google.org, WRI, WWF and Deltares. BlueConduit quantifies and maps hazardous lead service lines, making it easier to replace water infrastructure in vulnerable communities.

When it comes to protecting the future of our planet and the resources we rely on, there’s a lot to be done. We’ll keep looking for ways we can use our products and expertise to be good water stewards and partner with others to address these critical and shared water challenges.