Tag Archives: Environment

Coding for Conservation

Working on the CS First team, I love finding ways to get more kids involved with computer science at a young age. Though when I was a kid growing up in Miami, I spent most of my time off computers and on the water, admiring the natural beauty of the surrounding beaches and mangrove forests.

I focused my studies and spare time on the environment, and how we could protect and preserve the habitats and creatures that made my home so special. I didn’t quite understand how coding and technology would further my goal of protecting the environment until I got to Google, where I’ve learned that computer science is actually a critical tool for conservation and sustainability.

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Sarah has a BA in Environmental Studies from NYU and is pictured here in Belize on a sea turtle tagging and monitoring project with Google.

To help more kids understand the connection between coding and the environment (and to celebrate Earth Day!) we’re teaming up with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to invite students in grades 4-8 to create their own Google logo. Using Scratch, a block-based programming language, students will learn basic coding and stretch their design skills as they express their own ideas for protecting the planet.

To get ready to create their logo, students can watch videos to learn computer science concepts like sequencing and loops, practice analytical thinking and use creative problem solving skills. Those concepts and skills are the building blocks for developing technology that organizations like WWF and Google use in their efforts to protect the planet’s animals and natural environment. In fact, the themes of the logo activity—Sustainability and Wild Animals— were chosen to reflect those efforts.

I have long admired WWF’s mission to conserve nature and reduce threats to animals all over the world—they recently launched Wild Classroom, a free resource for educators to teach their students about the natural world. And as a Googler, I’m proud of the work our company has done to protect the environment: we’re committed to renewable energy adoption and energy efficiency, and have built free data tools to enable widespread solutions to issues like deforestation, overfishing and air pollution.

My hope is that this logo activity will show kids that learning to code can also mean protecting the environment. And this activity is for teachers, too. Along with CS First’s full curriculum, it gives teachers the tools they need to introduce computer science to students for the first time, as well as nurture students’ interest in computer science.

Source: Education


Meeting our match: Buying 100 percent renewable energy

A little over a year ago, we announced that we were on track to purchase enough renewable energy to match all the electricity we consumed over the next year. We just completed the accounting for Google’s 2017 energy use and it’s official—we met our goal. Google’s total purchase of energy from sources like wind and solar exceeded the amount of electricity used by our operations around the world, including offices and data centers.


What do we mean by “matching” renewable energy? Over the course of 2017, across the globe, for every kilowatt hour of electricity we consumed, we purchased a kilowatt hour of renewable energy from a wind or solar farm that was built specifically for Google. This makes us the first public Cloud, and company of our size, to have achieved this feat.


Today, we have contracts to purchase three gigawatts (3GW) of output from renewable energy projects; no corporate purchaser buys more renewable energy than we do. To date, our renewable energy contracts have led to over $3 billion in new capital investment around the world.

  • Corporate RE Purchasing League Table (2018)
    Google is the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world.
  • Renewable Energy PPA (2018)
    Google’s 26 renewable energy generation projects across the globe have a capacity of 3GW of total annual output.
  • Google Global Data Centers (2018)
    The energy consumed by our 15 data center sites, which run Google products 24/7, is matched 100% with renewable energy.

The road to 100 percent

We've been working toward this goal for a long time. At the outset of last year, we felt confident that 2017 was the year we'd meet it. Every year, we sign contracts for new renewable energy generation projects in markets where we have operations. From the time we sign a contract, it takes one to two years to build the wind farm or solar field before it begins producing energy. In 2016, our operational projects produced enough renewables to cover 57 percent of the energy we used from global utilities. That same year, we signed a record number of new contracts for wind and solar developments that were still under construction. Those projects began operating in 2017—and that additional output of renewable energy was enough to cover more than 100 percent of what we used during the whole year.


We say that we “matched” our energy usage because it’s not yet possible to “power” a company of our scale by 100 percent renewable energy. It’s true that for every kilowatt-hour of energy we consume, we add a matching kilowatt-hour of renewable energy to a power grid somewhere. But that renewable energy may be produced in a different place, or at a different time, from where we’re running our data centers and offices. What’s important to us is that we are adding new clean energy sources to the electrical system, and that we’re buying that renewable energy in the same amount as what we’re consuming, globally and on an annual basis.

Google's data center in Eemshaven, The Netherlands.
Google's data center in Eemshaven, The Netherlands.

Looking ahead

We’re building new data centers and offices, and as demand for Google products grows, so does our electricity load. We need to be constantly adding renewables to our portfolio to keep up. So we’ll keep signing contracts to buy more renewable energy. And in those regions where we can’t yet buy renewables, we’ll keep working on ways to help open the market. We also think every energy buyer—individuals and businesses alike—should be able to choose clean energy. We’re working with groups like the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance and Re-Source Platform to facilitate greater access to renewably-sourced energy.


This program has always been a first step for us, but it is an important milestone in our race to a carbon-free future. We do want to get to a point where renewables and other carbon-free energy sources actually power our operations every hour of every day. It will take a combination of technology, policy and new deal structures to get there, but we're excited for the challenge. We can’t wait to get back to work.

Source: Google Cloud


The She Word: Winnie Lam, helping Google do the right thing for the planet

Editor’s Note: The She Word is a Keyword series all about dynamic and creative women at Google. This week, Google and the World Wildlife Fund announced the Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online. We sat down with Winnie Lam, who works on our environmental sustainability team, to learn more about this effort and what it means to be the “Captain of Earthly Elements” (her actual title) at Google.

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How do you explain your job at a dinner party?
I’m responsible for environmental sustainability for Google data centers. My team’s job is to help Google do the right thing for the planet.

Have you always been interested in sustainability?
My dad’s first business was a car junkyard—he’d buy the cars that didn’t work and sell the parts. The concept of “reuse and recycle” was part of everything he did, and a big part of my upbringing. My whole family now works in that business.

Tell us about the years-long journey to the formation of the Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online.
In 2012, I led an effort to ban the sale of ivory through Google ads and Google Shopping. I'm not an expert on the ivory issue, so I sought help from World Wildlife Fund, and we dreamed of getting other tech companies to ban ivory and illegal wildlife products. This vision started taking shape at an inaugural meeting with WWF and major tech companies to stop wildlife trafficking online. And now 21 companies across North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa have joined the fight against wildlife trafficking.

How One Googler Stopped People From Selling Ivory

Learn more about Winnie's efforts to ban the sale of ivory through Google ads and Google Shopping

How’d you come up with your job title?
I gave myself the title “Captain of Earthly Elements,” because in my job, I work with the four classic elements: earth, water, air and fire.

You’ve been at Google for 13 years! What has kept you here?
I’ve had many roles over 13 years—from site reliability engineering to product management for our ads products to my current role. I’ve been very lucky that I can align personal and professional goals in the same job, and I’ve had several 20 percent projects (side projects that Googlers can dedicate part of their time to) that involve one of my biggest passions, animals. The effort to ban ivory started as a 20 percent project, actually.

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Winnie's handmade Halloween costume

Wow, what started as a 20 percent project is now a global coalition. Can you tell us about any other fun 20 percent projects?
For a few years, I recruited Googlers to go on a trip to Belize to measure the turtle population, along with scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society—that was a fun one.

What other things do you do in your free time?
I’m an artist and a musician. When I bought my house, I couldn’t find any furniture that I liked, so I decided to design my own. Now the environment is inspiration for my art—a couple of years ago when California was in an extreme drought, I dressed up as an artificial lawn for Halloween (handmade costume!). Couldn’t turn down the opportunity to make that statement.

What’s one habit that makes you successful?
I keep my eyes on the outcome, and always look for something in common with people. Not everyone cares about the environment as much as I do, but I can find common ground. For example, energy efficiency saves money, which can appeal to someone who works in finance, even if the environment isn’t a top priority for them.

What advice do you have for women starting out in their careers?
There’s no career path—you invent it, it’s in your hands. Figure out what demand there is for the thing you’re passionate about, and how your skills and network can be used.

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Winnie and Jane Goodall

Who has been a strong female influence in your life?
I’ve had many mentors along the way. I grew up going to an all-girls school, so female influences were everywhere in my life. Women as leaders were the norm. I once met Jane Goodall at a conference and had 60-second conversation with her about my idea to approach chefs in San Francisco, and ask them to stop serving bluefin tuna at their restaurant. She looked at me and said, "That's the only way to do it." She gave me confidence and validation to keep going, and I haven't stopped since.

Time to shine: New solar facility and an additional data center in Belgium

Data centers are the backbone of the internet, housing the systems and equipment that make our connected world possible. We opened our first European data center in Belgium back in 2009, and now we’re announcing plans to build a third building on the same site. We’re also announcing a new solar plant—the first solar facility we’ve built on a data center facility site.


We will invest approximately EUR 250 million to build the additional data center building in Saint-Ghislain, bringing our total investment in Belgium to EUR 1 billion. It’s due to be completed and operational by mid-2019.


The new solar plant, which is already up and running, represents a previous investment of EUR 3 million. And we’ve learned that it is the second-largest solar plant in the region!


Reaching 100 percent renewable energy for global operations

The photovoltaic installations will feature 10,665 solar panels and will generate 2.9 Gigawatt hour of clean, reliable, renewable energy every year. Construction began in March 2017, using a local company to install the solar farm on four hectares of land in our data center. Ultimately, the solar project will contribute to a greener footprint on our data center campus, already one of the most energy-efficient sites globally.


It’s not the first time we’ve acted on our sustainability goals in Belgium. Saint-Ghislain was the very first Google data center to run entirely without refrigeration, using instead an advanced cooling system that draws grey water from the nearby industrial canal.


It also fits in with our wider goal of ensuring a positive impact on the environment. We are calculating our final energy bills and expect that we reached our target of 100 percent renewable energy for our global operations in 2017, including data centers and offices. This means we’re directly buying enough wind and solar electricity to account for every unit of electricity we use—and it makes Google the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy worldwide.


Enhancing connectivity and creating jobs in Europe

Demand for Google services grows every day, and the steady expansion of our network across Europe reflects this. Along with Saint-Ghislain, we have data centers at Eemshaven in The Netherlands, Dublin, Ireland, and Hamina in Finland. Each investment enhances connectivity.


Data centers also benefit communities through job creation. The whole Saint-Ghislain site currently employs around 350 people in full-time and contractor roles—from computer technicians to electrical and mechanical engineers, to security, catering and facilities management. With this investment of EUR 250 million, we’ll create more construction jobs, and more full-time roles in Google once the third building is complete and operational.


Belgium: a digital frontrunner in Europe

Charles Michel, Prime Minister of Belgium, joined us for an event this week announcing these projects, where he celebrated Belgium’s investment and ambitions as a digital pioneer. "The digital world is constantly changing, and Belgium is becoming more and more attractive for big investors like Google. This new investment is excellent news for the Walloon region and Belgium in terms of job creation."


We’re grateful to the local and national government, local suppliers and community for their continued support of our data center presence in Belgium. We hope it contributes to make Belgium a digital frontrunner in Europe, creating jobs, skills development and economic opportunities.

Getting hyper-local: Mapping street-level air quality across California

Most air pollution is measured at a city level, but air quality can change block by block, hour by hour and day to day. To better understand air quality on a more local level, we began working with our partner Aclima — to map air pollution across California using Google Street View cars—equipped with air quality sensors.  Earlier this year, we shared the the first results of this effort with pollution levels throughout the city of Oakland.

We're just beginning to understand what's possible with this hyper-local information and today, we’re starting to share some of our findings for the three California regions we’ve mapped: the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and California’s Central Valley (the Street View cars drove 100,000 miles, over the course of 4,000 hours to collect this data!) Scientists and air quality specialists can use this information to assist local organizations, governments, and regulators in identifying opportunities to achieve greater air quality improvements and solutions.

Over 195 nations will gather in Bonn for the COP23 UN Climate Climate Change conference this week. Rising to the climate challenge will involve a  mix of policy, technology and international cooperation and we believe that insights about air quality at the community level can help support both local and global action on climate. Below we’ve highlighted some of our findings for these regions. 

CA

Over a three month period, our Street View cars mapped air quality in different areas of Los Angeles, ranging from urban to residential, inland to the Pacific Ocean, and areas near major freeways, ports, or refineries. The measurements indicate that traffic-choked freeways, traffic on local streets, and weather patterns that blow pollution inland all influence the patterns of air pollution.

Air quality measurements in Los Angeles region (Landsat / Copernicus, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, IBCAO, Data LDEO-Columbia, NSF, Data USGS, Data CSUMB SFML, CA OPC)

Air quality measurements in Los Angeles region (Landsat / Copernicus, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, IBCAO, Data LDEO-Columbia, NSF, Data USGS, Data CSUMB SFML, CA OPC)

Compared to Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, which we mapped over the past two years, is a higher density city. A large percentage of air pollution emissions comes from vehicles like cars, trucks, and construction equipment, and industrial sources like refineries and power plants added to the mix. The measurements here indicate street-level pollution patterns are affected by these local and distributed sources.

Air quality measurements in the San Francisco Bay Area region (TerraMetrics, Data CSUMB SFML, CA OPC, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Data LDEO-Columbia, NSF, Data MBARI, Landsat / Copernicus)

Air quality measurements in the San Francisco Bay Area region (TerraMetrics, Data CSUMB SFML, CA OPC, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Data LDEO-Columbia, NSF, Data MBARI, Landsat / Copernicus)

While much of California’s Central Valley is rural with a lot of agriculture, it’s also home to cities, such as Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton, and Modesto. Interstate 5 and Interstate 99 are two major traffic corridors that run through the region, connecting Northern and Southern California. Interstate and regional traffic, along with industry and agriculture, are sources of air pollution in the region. Weather conditions and topography can trap air pollution between the coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains resulting in a chronic ozone and particulate matter levels that exceed public health standards.

Air quality measurements in California’s Central Valley region (Landsat / Copernicus, Data MBARI, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Data LDEO-Columbia, NSF, Data CSUMB SFML, CA OPC, Data USGS)

Air quality measurements in California’s Central Valley region (Landsat / Copernicus, Data MBARI, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Data LDEO-Columbia, NSF, Data CSUMB SFML, CA OPC, Data USGS)

So far, we’ve measured over one billion air quality data points but this is just the beginning—and now air quality scientists can request access to the data. Air quality impacts our planet and our health—and we hope this information helps us build smarter more sustainable cities, reduce climate changing greenhouse gases and improve air quality for healthier living.

Tune in to Aclima’s blog for more data stories from our California driving campaign in the coming days and weeks.

Source: Google LatLong


Healthy eating, with sustainability in mind

Today, the United Nations, Google and many others celebrate World Food Day, which promotes worldwide action on food security and ensuring nutritious diets for those who suffer from hunger. At Google, food is central to our culture and something we think about every day. Feeding more than 70,000 people around the world breakfast, lunch and dinner is a pretty big undertaking, and we strive to make healthy eating an easy choice for our employees and do so in the most sustainable way possible.


One of our priorities is to minimize the environmental impact from the production of the food in our cafes. This is particularly important given that agricultural activities in the U.S. are estimated to generate 9 percent of greenhouse gases. We start by sourcing our food from suppliers that raise, farm, and harvest food responsibly. This means thinking about nutrition, as well as environmental, and social factors such as food quality, food safety, employment practices and environmental impact.


Once we have the food and supplies in hand, we focus on reducing waste. On the pre-consumer side (the ingredients we use to prep food prior to serving), our food team looks for ways to reduce waste before food hits the plate, by cutting down on over-purchasing and creatively repurposing leftover ingredients to make new dishes. In April 2014, we formalized this effort by partnering with LeanPath, a technology that helps us understand exactly how and why food is being wasted in order to improve to our process.


Today we have 129 cafes participating in the LeanPath program across 11 countries. Since the start of the partnership, these efforts have saved a total of three million pounds of food. Our Food Team has analyzed the food waste data generated from this program, enabling chefs in Google cafes to try out new strategies that reduce food waste while serving healthy and delicious meals to Googlers.


Many Google cafes include two-sided salad bars and hot food lines. Now, multiple cafes are breaking down two-sided food stations when traffic starts to slow down. So, when fewer people are visiting the cafe, staff will shut down the duplicate side of a station to adjust the amount of food being served. We’re also opening more cafes that have made-to-order choices instead of buffets, and have started serving food in shallow pans that are refilled more frequently. Not only does this reduce the amount of food being prepared and ultimately wasted, it also results in fresher food being served.


As part of our partnership with LeanPath, we’re piloting a measurement program on the post-consumer side (after food has been served and enjoyed) in five of our cafes to track the food waste from each individual plate. Since food is self-served in these cafes, we’d rather Googlers come back for second helpings instead of taking more food than they can eat.  At the dish drop area in each of these cafes, a station is available for Googlers to scrape the excess food from their plate onto a scale telling them how much food they’re wasting.

  • Screen Shot 2017-10-04 at 4.44.26 PM.png
    Members of Google’s cafe team prepare produce for lunch.
  • Screen Shot 2017-10-04 at 4.44.33 PM.png

    A cafe team member uses the back-of-house LeanPath food waste measuring system.

  • Screen Shot 2017-10-13 at 4.31.28 PM.png

    Google cafes purchase imperfect produce that might otherwise end up in a landfill.

  • u

    A digital data sign displays stats about food waste in a Google cafe.

While our priority is to reduce food waste from the start, it’s inevitable that there will be excess food prepared. In these situations, we want to ensure that the food is put to the best possible use. We participate in a program called Chefs to End Hunger, where we send untouched, edible food to local shelters and food banks in our communities. Through this program, we’ve contributed approximately 1,000 pounds of food per week from more than 40 Bay Area Google cafes to a transitional homeless shelter in Oakland, CA. After donating, our next step is to compost. In almost all Google cafes and buildings we have composting and recycling bins. As a result, we’re able to compost about 80 percent of waste in our cafes.


Plus, we’re always looking for new and creative food innovations. One example is our partnership with CoffeeFlour, a company that uses the discarded byproduct from the coffee-making process and grinds it into a flour. The flour can then be used in both sweet and savory dishes. CoffeeFlour is a nutrient-dense flour, so it’s a great alternative to traditional flour used in cooking and baking. This is a great example of how the food industry can be both sustainable and create healthy ingredients. The producer also employs local people in coffee-growing regions, so it has social benefits too. In addition to partnering with sustainable suppliers like CoffeeFlour, we've also made it a global priority to purchase imperfect produce—imperfect aesthetically on the outside but perfectly delicious on the inside—so that we can use produce that might otherwise go to waste.


We stand with the UN on their goal to halve global food waste by 2030 and create sustainable and resilient food systems that deliver for all people and the planet. We know it will take a huge amount of effort and are committed to doing our part and help raise awareness for this imperative work. At Google, we like to tackle the biggest problems by starting with our own impact. Food is a precious resource, and we’ll always look for ways to conserve what we use and share what we learn.

Why building on an environmentally responsible cloud matters

Operating Google in an environmentally sustainable way has been a core value from day one. Each year we release our environmental report to share updates on our progress towards a more sustainable future. This year’s report marks our 10th year of carbon neutrality, and we’re excited to share that, in 2017, we’ll reach our goal of 100 percent renewable energy for all of our operations. This includes our data centers, which support our millions of customers on Google Cloud.

As more and more companies transform their businesses digitally, or build new ones, renewable energy is increasingly critical. As businesses, we affect the environment in ways often not clearly visible. Continued and accelerated digital transformation will generate a large digital exhaust. Some projections have data centers consuming as much as 13 percent of the world’s electricity by 2030. If that electricity is not sourced responsibly, it has the potential to significantly and negatively impact the environment.

sustainability-on-gcp-4

We believe that environmental impact should be an important consideration—alongside factors such as price, security, openness and reliability—when it comes to data storage, processing and development. Fortunately, more and more companies are making commitments toward sustainability.

Here are a few ways businesses can create real impact:

  • By moving from a self-managed data center or colocation facility to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), the emissions directly associated with your company’s compute and data storage will be reduced to zero.

  • Businesses that switch to cloud-based productivity tools like G Suite have reported reductions in IT energy use and carbon emissions by 65 percent to 85 percent.

  • Machine learning workloads can require complex computations that are energy intensive. Google Cloud TPUs are designed with energy efficiency in mind, specifically to accelerate deep learning workloads at higher teraflops per watt compared to general purpose processors.

  • Energy efficient cold storage options can help you retain data long term without sacrificing speed to access.

Google takes our commitment to sustainability very seriously. Many data centers use almost as much non-computing or "overhead" energy (like cooling and power conversion) as they do to power their servers. At Google, we've reduced this overhead to only 12 percent (a.k.a. a PUE of 1.12). We also use our own machine learning in our data centers, which enables the analysis of massive amounts of operational data center data to create actionable recommendations, automated controls and 15 percent further reduction in energy overhead.

For each unit of electricity we use as a company, we’ve committed to purchasing an equivalent amount (or more) of renewable energy. This includes the energy we use to power all our Google Cloud users. We also have a high bar for the energy we purchase: We strive to buy renewable energy from projects that are new to the grid, enabling those developers to finance and add even more green power.  In fact, Google is the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world.

sustainability-on-gcp-3

We’re very proud that Greenpeace gave us an A rating in the 2016 Clicking Clean report, its annual benchmark of the IT sector’s energy performance. But we know there’s still more work to be done. We believe that building on a sustainable cloud is not just good for the environment, it’s good for business, too. We built Google on that belief—and we invite you to build your business on it as well.  

Why building on an environmentally responsible cloud matters

Operating Google in an environmentally sustainable way has been a core value from day one. Each year we release our environmental report to share updates on our progress towards a more sustainable future. This year’s report marks our 10th year of carbon neutrality, and we’re excited to share that, in 2017, we’ll reach our goal of 100 percent renewable energy for all of our operations. This includes our data centers, which support our millions of customers on Google Cloud.

As more and more companies transform their businesses digitally, or build new ones, renewable energy is increasingly critical. As businesses, we affect the environment in ways often not clearly visible. Continued and accelerated digital transformation will generate a large digital exhaust. Some projections have data centers consuming as much as 13 percent of the world’s electricity by 2030. If that electricity is not sourced responsibly, it has the potential to significantly and negatively impact the environment.

sustainability-on-gcp-4

We believe that environmental impact should be an important consideration—alongside factors such as price, security, openness and reliability—when it comes to data storage, processing and development. Fortunately, more and more companies are making commitments toward sustainability.

Here are a few ways businesses can create real impact:

  • By moving from a self-managed data center or colocation facility to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), the emissions directly associated with your company’s compute and data storage will be reduced to zero.

  • Businesses that switch to cloud-based productivity tools like G Suite have reported reductions in IT energy use and carbon emissions by 65 percent to 85 percent.

  • Machine learning workloads can require complex computations that are energy intensive. Google Cloud TPUs are designed with energy efficiency in mind, specifically to accelerate deep learning workloads at higher teraflops per watt compared to general purpose processors.

  • Energy efficient cold storage options can help you retain data long term without sacrificing speed to access.

Google takes our commitment to sustainability very seriously. Many data centers use almost as much non-computing or "overhead" energy (like cooling and power conversion) as they do to power their servers. At Google, we've reduced this overhead to only 12 percent (a.k.a. a PUE of 1.12). We also use our own machine learning in our data centers, which enables the analysis of massive amounts of operational data center data to create actionable recommendations, automated controls and 15 percent further reduction in energy overhead.

For each unit of electricity we use as a company, we’ve committed to purchasing an equivalent amount (or more) of renewable energy. This includes the energy we use to power all our Google Cloud users. We also have a high bar for the energy we purchase: We strive to buy renewable energy from projects that are new to the grid, enabling those developers to finance and add even more green power.  In fact, Google is the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world.

sustainability-on-gcp-3

We’re very proud that Greenpeace gave us an A rating in the 2016 Clicking Clean report, its annual benchmark of the IT sector’s energy performance. But we know there’s still more work to be done. We believe that building on a sustainable cloud is not just good for the environment, it’s good for business, too. We built Google on that belief—and we invite you to build your business on it as well.  

Source: Google Cloud


Our 2017 environmental report

Today, we published our updated Environmental Report, which provides data on Google's environmental sustainability programs. This report closes out 2016, a landmark year ushering in three major milestones: 10 years of carbon neutrality, 10 years for the Earth Outreach program, and reaching 100 percent renewable energy for our operations.

Last year, we marked 10 years of operating as a carbon neutral company. In 2007, we committed to aggressively pursuing energy efficiency, renewable energy, and high-quality carbon offsets. Since then, our carbon footprint has grown more slowly than our business. We’ve learned and advanced across these areas in ways we couldn’t have imagined a decade ago—and the work has proven that we can serve a growing number of users while using fewer natural resources.

Most notably, in 2017 Google will reach 100 percent renewable energy for our global operations—including both our data centers and offices. That means that we will directly purchase enough wind and solar electricity annually to account for every unit of electricity we consume, globally. This shift in our energy strategy didn’t just significantly reduce our environmental impact. By pioneering new energy purchasing models that others can follow, we’ve helped drive widescale global adoption of clean energy.

Also marking 10 years is the Earth Outreach program, which gives nonprofit groups resources, tools, and inspiration to leverage the power of Google Earth and other mapping tools for their causes. Earth Outreach is now combining machine learning and cloud computing to build a living, breathing dashboard of the planet. By turning the mountains of geo-data we have into insights and knowledge, we can help guide better decision-making in local communities and at global scale.

earth online

A major consequence of society’s “take-make-waste” economic model is climate change, one of the most significant challenges of our time. We believe Google can build tools to improve people’s lives while reducing our dependence on natural resources and fossil fuels. And we’re committed to working with others to empower everyone—businesses, governments, nonprofit organizations, communities, and individuals—to create a more sustainable world.

We’ve shared some new stories on our environment website about renewable energy in Europe and our healthy building materials tool. We also describe how these efforts can positively impact the millions of customers using Google Cloud.

Google is moving in the right direction when it comes to environmental stewardship—but there’s a lot more work to do. We’re looking ahead at the next 10 years of decreasing our impact on the earth while building technology that helps as many people as possible.

Why we should develop “circular cities” and how Google technology can help

The process of digging up materials, turning those materials into a product, and shipping it to an “end user” (who eventually tosses it in the trash) is called the “linear” economy, and it’s depleting our world of resources faster than they can be replenished. We need to ditch this old model and move to a “circular” economy. Instead of using raw resources (think timber and ore) to create new products, the circular economy keeps materials in circulation for multiple uses, whether they are maintained, reused, refurbished, or recycled.

Today, 54 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas accounting for 75 percent of natural resource consumption, 50 percent of global waste production, and 60-80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. So, the concept of the circular economy is especially relevant in cities.

Digital technology helps city leaders and citizens gather, refine, and analyze data to create cities that are circular by design. Today we published a white paper with our partners at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that explores how digital technology and a few of Google’s existing efforts can enable more circular cities. Google has captured insights across cities, from the quality of the air people breathe to the amount of solar power people could put on their roof at home. Google Cloud Platform allows for global-scale data sharing and provides the foundation for collaborative projects between public and private organizations, such as the Waze Connected Citizens Program.

Along with Arup and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, we’re also exploring how to build circular cities through a joint project called the Circularity Lab. Located in both the Bay Area and New York City, the Lab will raise awareness about circularity in the built environment and create a space where people can see how it could positively impact their lives and communities.

The circular economy model, enriched with technology, is a powerful and potentially highly productive combination. We’re excited to continue exploring these opportunities.