Today Google, along with Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, filed a legal brief with the DC Circuit Court supporting the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. The CPP aims to accelerate the transition to cleaner sources of electricity and puts an emphasis on renewable energy development and energy efficiency. The plan has been put on hold pending the outcome of a legal challenge.

Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have come together in this brief to offer our unique view as large consumers of energy. Collectively we used 10 million MWh of electricity last year, including at 50 data centers in 12 states. That means reliable and affordable electricity is integral to the continued growth and operation of all of our businesses and the services we offer to our users everywhere. We are all committed to sourcing our power in a sustainable way, and renewable energy makes good business sense for us all.   

At Google, we have been carbon neutral since 2007. We have signed contracts to purchase over 2GW of renewable energy -- equivalent to taking nearly one million cars off the road -- making us the largest non-utility renewable energy purchaser in the world. Just last year we signed the largest and most diverse purchase of renewable energy made by a non-utility company to power our data centers. The deal covers a series of new wind and solar projects around the world and takes us one step closer to our goal of powering 100% of our operations with clean energy. Above and beyond our own power purchases, we have also invested more than $2.5 billion in 22 other renewable projects around the world.

These efforts underline the seriousness of our commitment to renewables and we believe the CPP is an important step in the transition to a cleaner energy future. The message from our companies today is clear -- we can meet the world’s future energy challenges in a way that drives innovation and growth while tackling climate change.
Posted by Michael Terrell, Principal, Energy and Global Infrastructure.

In July 2014, Google and the IEEE launched the $1 Million Little Box Challenge, an open competition to design and build a small kW-scale inverter with a power density greater than 50 Watts per cubic inch while meeting a number of other specifications related to efficiency, electrical noise and thermal performance. Over 2,000 teams from across the world registered for the competition and more than 80 proposals qualified for review by IEEE Power Electronics Society and Google. In October 2015, 18 finalists were selected to bring their inverters to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for testing.



Today, Google and the IEEE are proud to announce that the grand prize winner of the $1 Million Little Box Challenge is CE+T Power’s Red Electrical Devils. The Red Electrical Devils (named after Belgium’s national soccer team) were declared the winner by a consensus of judges from Google, IEEE Power Electronics Society and NREL. Honorable mentions go to teams from Schneider Electric and Virginia Tech’s Future Energy Electronics Center.


[CE+T Power’s Red Electrical Devils receive $1 Million Little Box Challenge Prize]

Schneider, Virginia Tech and The Red Electrical Devils all built 2kW inverters that passed 100 hours of testing at NREL, adhered to the technical specifications of the competition, and were recognized today in a ceremony at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in Washington, DC. Among the 3 finalists, the Red Electric Devils’ inverter had the highest power density and smallest volume.



Impressively, the winning team exceeded the power density goal for the competition by a factor of 3, which is 10 times more compact than commercially available inverters! When we initially brainstormed technical targets for the Little Box Challenge, some of us at Google didn’t think such audacious goals could be achieved. Three teams from around the world proved decisively that it could be done.

Our takeaway: Establish a worthy goal and smart people will exceed it!

Congratulations again to CE+T Power’s Red Electrical Devils, Schneider Electric and Virginia Tech’s Future Energy Electronics and sincere thanks to our collaborators at IEEE and NREL. The finalist’s technical approach documents will be posted on the Little Box Challenge website until December 31, 2017. We hope this helps advance the state of the art and innovation in kW-scale inverters.





Posted by Ross Koningstein, Engineering Director Emeritus, Google Research

Big dreams lead to big steps and that couldn’t be more true at Google. We’ve made a commitment to power our operations with 100% renewable energy and to date we’ve made great strides towards that goal. Last month we announced 842 MW of new renewable energy purchases in the US, Sweden, and Chile which boosts our overall purchasing to over 2 GW of renewable energy capacity. This has the same carbon impact as taking nearly 1 million cars off the road and helps us get closer to our 100% goal.

But what does it really mean to be 100% “powered by renewables”? Fundamentally we mean this: Google purchases, on an annual basis, the same volume (MWh) of renewable energy as the volume of MWh of energy that we consume for our operations.

To unpack what this means let’s start with some basics of the electricity system itself.

We know that electricity generated in one spot cannot be physically directed to a specific user over the electricity grid any more than a cup of water dumped into a river could be directed to a particular runoff stream. Once you put electricity on the grid, it becomes part of the pool of energy within that grid system and flows where physics dictates.  There is no way to track if “the energy from wind farm X is going to supply data center Y.”

Given that you can’t tell electrons where to go, how do you “use” renewable energy? One solution is to not use the grid at all, for example by installing renewable generation adjacent to a power-consuming facility “behind the meter”. But this doesn’t usually make economic or practical sense for large facilities like data centers. Instead, large renewable energy projects should be developed where they are most productive and cost-effective - which is usually miles away from where our data centers are best located.

Further, wind and solar resources provide power only when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining but Google’s data centers operate 24x7. If we wanted to power our data centers from adjacently-sited wind or solar and operate disconnected from the rest of the grid, Google’s products would be offline whenever renewable resources aren’t producing energy. Grid-scale energy storage resources (for example very, very large batteries) could solve this problem, but storage technology at the scale we would need is far from cost-effective today.

Figure 1: Indicative hourly profiles for energy consumption from a data center and energy production from wind and solar resources. Note that these are profiles are purely indicative and do not represent specific data center or renewable generation facilities.

As we move towards a 24/7 zero-carbon electricity world we will need to remain connected to the electric grid to allow people to access their Gmail when they want, upload YouTube videos at all hours of the day, and collaborate on docs and spreadsheets with colleagues on the other side of the world.

Indeed, there are tangible benefits to using the grid, such as helping to manage the variability of renewables. For example, our Iowa utility, MidAmerican Energy, has a portfolio of energy generation that is comprised of 40% wind and takes advantage of a large regional network to manage any variability in its system or in an individual wind resource. Similarly, in Europe, the energy provider for our Finland data center purchases renewable energy in Sweden and uses the Nordpool regional electricity grid to manage variability and deliver us consistent 24x7 power.

These are the criteria we strive to meet whenever we purchase renewable energy:

• Additionality. We want our efforts to result in new renewable energy projects, not reshuffling the output from existing projects. For example, Google committing to buy the entire output of a 72 MW wind farm in Northern Sweden provided enough revenue security to wind developer O2 to be able to secure financing from German insurance firm Allianz to construct the project. This arrangement brought additional renewable energy onto the grid as a direct result of Google’s long-term commitment.
• Bundled physical energy and its “renewable certification”. We purchase both the physical renewable power and the corresponding certification of its renewable source - “RECs” in the United States and “GOOs” in Europe - which represents the “green-ness” of the power (a detailed explanation of this is here). Many companies simply buy RECs or GOOs from existing projects on the open market, unbundled from the physical power. We set a high bar at Google and always seek to purchase these together.
• Proximity. Where possible we look for renewable projects close to where our data centers are based to maximize physical proximity of renewable supply and consumption. For example we purchase all wind energy generated by NextEra Energy Resources’ 100.8 MW Minco II facility in Oklahoma, which is within the same grid area as our data center in Pryor, Oklahoma.

As we grow we may find ourselves temporarily oversupplied in some regions and undersupplied in others (where access to renewables is currently more limited). We will also be drawing power from the grid to meet our 24/7 power supply needs, which means being dependent on the local grid mix even if portions of it are non-renewable -- although as explained above, we will have separately purchased enough MWh of renewable generation to “cover” this non-renewable portion.

Over the long term, we know that to be serious about solving climate change and reaching 100% renewable, we will need to do more. To that end we are supporting policy and market reforms including effective design and rollout of the Clean Power Plan and the creation of pan-European electricity grids, working on new technologies like Project Sunroof and Makani Power, and conducting in-depth research on data center design to maximize energy efficiency. And we’re looking for opportunities to repurpose traditional electricity infrastructure as we did with our renewable-powered data center on the site of a former coal plant in Alabama.

Here’s to dreaming big!


Posted by Gary Demasi, Director, Data Center Energy & Location Strategy

From November 30 through December 11, the French government hosted COP21 the UN Climate Change Conference which resulted in 195 countries coming together to adopt the most ambitious climate change agreement in history. Roughly 40,000 people attended including 195 nations and thousands of NGOs and corporations.

Over the past two weeks in Paris, Googlers have been discussing how sustainability has been making good business sense for us. We believe that strong action from the business community is critical to meeting the climate challenge. We were official sponsors of COP21 through the French Government, we co-hosted an event with RE100 and The Climate Group on the role of industry in driving renewable energy growth, and we showcased a Google immersive Portal display with rolling presentations of climate content from various partners!

At our event with The Climate Group and RE100, we hosted leaders from government and business at our Paris office to discuss the role that companies can play in leading the way to a 100% renewable energy future. More than 60% of global Fortune 100 companies have set public renewable energy or GHG reduction targets not only because they believe in environmental sustainability but because they think that renewable energy makes good business sense. Leaders from Google, Ikea, Unilever, Marks & Spencer, and Philips Lighting discussed their business cases for purchasing renewable energy, and were joined by officials from the European Commission and the South Australian Government to focus on the role of government policy in unlocking private sector demand for renewables.
To help showcase climate issues, the “Google Portal,” an immersive 9 screen, 3 x 3 meter square interactive display, was constructed in the public Climate Generations Area to allow people to explore and learn about their world, and to encourage public discussion. With 70 presentations, nonprofit demonstrations ranged from sea level rise by Climate Central, deforestation from Global Forest Watch and MapBiomas, coral bleaching from Underwater Earth and Sylvia Earle, and Climate Reality on the current state of climate changes. The Mayor of Paris, along with a broader coalition of mayors, presented their climate commitments before formal submission to the United Nations. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization discussed Collect Earth and land classification tool to enable country reporting and measurement and the EU Commission previewed the first look at a Global Water Surface map over the last 30 years. Google projects including Makani’s energy kites, the Earth Engine platform, a timelapse movie of the changing landscape, and YouTube’s #OursToLose campaign were shown.
It's great to see a strong international climate agreement coming out of Paris that moves us towards a zero-carbon economy. Climate change is one of the most significant global challenges of our time. Rising to that challenge involves a complex mix of policy, technology, and international cooperation and Google is committed to doing our part.

Posted by Kate Brandt, Lead for Sustainability

As the COP21 conference in Paris comes to an end this week, we’re expanding Project Sunroof, our online tool to help homeowners explore whether they should consider installing solar panels to reduce their energy costs, which we first launched in August. Starting this week, millions of homeowners across select metro areas in the most active solar states in the U.S., including California, Massachusetts, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Connecticut, Colorado and North Carolina, will be able to calculate their roof’s solar energy potential by using the same high-resolution aerial mapping technology used in Google Earth. Having this information will give you information on how to increase energy efficiency while cutting your monthly electric bill.

To provide accurate estimates, Project Sunroof uses a unique set of data that assesses how much sunlight your roof gets, the orientation, shade from trees and nearby buildings, and local weather patterns—essentially creating a solar score for every rooftop that it maps. You can then provide your current average electricity costs and compare them to what you'd pay with solar. So not only can you learn whether your house is a good fit for solar panels, but you can also determine whether paying for installation will pay off in the long run -- in short, see the effect sunlight can have on your wallet.

Map of sunlight hitting roofs in downtown Boston

Solar installations today are growing rapidly (a system is installed every 2.5 minutes in the U.S.), but there remains tremendous untapped potential. In fact, only half a percent of U.S. electricity comes from solar power. According to GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association’s U.S. Solar Market Insight Report, the US is on track for a record-breaking year, thanks to a booming residential photovoltaics market. By end of 2016, cumulative solar installations are poised to nearly double.

Solar may help you cut costs while increasing efficiency. With Project Sunroof, you can more easily assess your home's solar energy potential—and help move us all toward a more renewable future.

Posted by Carl Elkin, Engineering Lead for Project Sunroof