Announcing Google’s third decade of climate action

Sustainability

Aug 22

Topic Corporate Sustainability
Source original article Google

In our founding decade, Google became the first major company to be carbon neutral. In our second decade, we were the first company to achieve 100% renewable energy. By 2030, we aim to be the first major company to operate carbon free.Moving towards carbon free by 2030 won’t be easy. Here’s how we’re leading at Google, supporting partners, and enabling everyone to be part of the solution to climate change.

Leading at Google

We always start with how we can operate our business more sustainably. It’s our responsibility - and it’s also the best way to innovate, iterate, and share best practices with others.

Operating on carbon-free energy 24/7 by 2030

We’re proud that we were the first major company to reach carbon neutrality and have become the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable energy. But we know we must push further to confront the magnitude of today’s climate challenge. Now, we aim to be the first major company to achieve 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030.

To get there, we’re pursuing new carbon-free energy generation and storage technologies. We’ll continue our work with governments, utilities, and policymakers to deploy those technologies and drive system-level change. And as we learn more about the best ways to move towards our goal, we hope to demonstrate that a fully decarbonized future is achievable for everyone.

Carbon neutral since 2007 1998

In 2007, we were the first major company to commit to carbon neutrality, and since 2017 we’ve matched 100% of our electricity consumption with renewable energy purchases. So what about those years between 1998 and 2006? Good question. As of today, we’ve procured enough high-quality carbon offsets to neutralize all of our emissions since our founding.

Deploy $5.75B in sustainability bonds

Sustainability bonds are increasingly-important tools that drive investment in environmental and social initiatives worldwide. This August, we issued $5.75 billion in sustainability bonds. It’s the largest corporate issuance of its kind, ever.These investments will ramp up support for a wide variety of issues vital to a sustainable future - clean energy, green buildings, clean transportation, circular design, affordable housing, racial equity, COVID-19 response, and support for small businesses, just to name a few.

Enable 5 GW of new carbon-free energy in manufacturing regions by 2030

Carbon-free energy is hard to source in many parts of the world, including in some of our key manufacturing regions. To help drive development of wind, solar, and other clean energy generation where it’s needed most, we’re building on our previous investment to bring a total of five gigawatts online over the next ten years. That's more than all the solar capacity available in the state of Arizona today.

Supporting Partners

Deleting emissions from our own operations is vital, but our impact is far greater when we enable others to do the same. We’re committed to sharing technology, methods, and funding to help organizations everywhere transition to resilient, carbon-free systems.

Help over 500 cities to reduce 1 gigaton of carbon emissions annually by 2030

Half of Earth’s population lives in cities. Seventy percent of emissions originate in cities. Environmental Insights Explorer already helps a hundred cities understand their emissions and solar potential more clearly. We’re making that data available to 3,000 cities, helping them to measure, plan, and track progress towards their climate action plans. This creates a quicker pathway to better air quality and new green jobs, with a goal of emissions reductions equivalent to taking 200 million cars off the road for a year.

Remove more carbon from the atmosphere with reforestation and better tree data

Efficiency and clean energy are vital, but we also need to remove carbon that’s already in the air. Nature provides a great solution - trees - but knowing where, when, and what to plant is critical to ensure planted trees thrive and have the desired effect of restoring lands and communities.We’re starting with our own science-based reforestation efforts in California, Texas, Spain, and Australia. We’re also partnering with Crowther Lab to develop a global data platform to increase the impact of restoration projects around the world, enabling others to come on this journey.

Launch €10M Climate Impact Challenge to accelerate green recovery

The Google.org Impact Challenge on Climate commits €10M to fund bold ideas that aim to use technology to accelerate Europe’s progress toward a greener, more resilient future. Selected organizations may receive up to €2M in funding and possible customized post-grant support from the Google for Startups Accelerator to help bring their ideas to life.

Breakthrough AI research to dramatically increase building efficiency

In 2016, Google and DeepMind started using machine learning to control the cooling systems in our global data centers. Those algorithms now work safely and autonomously to bring a 30% energy savings to our cooling systems, in our most energy-intense buildings. Pretty cool, but just a start.Now, we’ve developed the Industrial Adaptive Controls platform to deliver AI-enabled energy savings on a global scale. We will make these solutions available to the largest industrial enterprises and Building Management software providers. These software providers collectively make up nearly 60% of the global large commercial building footprint. Now that’s efficiency at planetary scale.

Enabling Everyone

Google helps people around the world take action to live more sustainably every day. People searched for “How to live a more sustainable lifestyle” more than ever in 2020. And some of our products are already helping people around the world take steps to do just that. They turn to Google Maps to find sustainable transit options like walking, biking, and public transportation. And Nest Thermostats have helped customers save 50 billion kWh of energy over the years. But we know there’s more we can do to help everyone live more sustainably.

Offer 1 billion people new ways to take actions to reduce their environmental footprint by 2022

We’re building products and technology that empower people to better understand their personal impact and reduce their carbon footprint. Over the next two years, we’ll build features that connect people with more sustainable options and offer actionable information at the right time. Our goal is to help a billion people reduce their environmental footprint each year by introducing new sustainability features directly into our core products. We’ve already started this journey: we added CO₂ emission estimates, and the ability to sort by emissions, for some flights in Europe via Google Flights. We’ve also added carbon-neutral shipping and highlighting of sustainable items in Google Shopping. And there’s a lot more coming soon.