The tech giant Google was able to match 100 percent of its energy usage after closing deals to buy more wind and solar power generated electricity.
The purchase amounts to 3 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, enough to power all of its offices and data centers on an annual basis. Google consumed 5.7 terawatt-hours of electricity, or about as much as the city of San Francisco uses in a year.
Google's most resource-hungry properties, include 15 of its data centers that are located across the world. They run 24/7 to power its search engine and various of its other services.
With Google matching its energy consumption with renewable energy, Google is becoming more aggressive in buying renewables for its company's operation, more than any of its competitors, and much more than any other company in the United States, Europe, and Mexico.
Google in using renewable energy sources does not mean that Google is all "powered" by renewables. Instead, the company hits this accomplishment by buying renewable energy certificates (RECs), which ensure a certain quantity of wind and solar electricity is allocated to a given use.
What this means, Google bought renewable power in quantities that match its use, even though that electricity isn’t necessarily powering its operations directly.
“We are purchasing the energy and selling it back into the market in regions where we can't consume it,” said Google spokesperson Amy Atlas.
New clean energy purchases bring our total wind and solar capacity to over 3 gigawatts—enough renewables to match 100% of the energy it takes to run our products in 2017. pic.twitter.com/8ykaWO9LU0
— Google (@Google) November 30, 2017
At the time, renewable energy is having a little room to grow. The race to provide power, has been dominated by natural gas, coal and nuclear power. This is because renewable energy can't yet match the price of those natural resources on most countries in the world.
What's more, solar and wind farms also have their own environmental footprint. Beyond electricity, facilities like data centers also require land and consume water for cooling. That means de-carbonizing electricity isn’t enough for large tech companies to reduce their impact on the world.
Data centers use about 3 percent of America's total power consumption. With this fact, Google and others still need to cut their energy consumption overall to reduce their environmental impact, especially since many of them are still expanding.
Changing how companies get their electricity, requires a cultural shift in how the tech sectors manage their resources.
