'Green' Google

In This Article:

- How Google's Lead & Investments spur this Energy Revolution

It all makes sense!  It is obvious that Google demonstrates a strong will and mindset towards creating a green work place, products and renewable energy infrastructure locally and globally. This vision and mindset strongly resonates with my strive and postings in this blog - Smart Planet.    

The schematic to the left shows the situation in a simplified way: being 'green' firstly means being very efficient in operations. Efficient or lean operations, however, is nothing else but saving costs. The beauty about such operations is that  they have a strong connotation of sustainability to it. All in all a quite smart model. Next we will discuss a few details about Google's implementations and investments.  

Google's Green Campus in Mountain View

Everyone know's that Google serves exquisite food at their cafeterias. This food comes from local farmers and does not travel the average 1600 miles before it gets enjoyed by the end consumer. Such short distances produce less CO2, and let's face it, a fresh salad simply tastes better than a 1-week old one anyways, and features more vitamins on top (and yes, you might experience reduced health care costs through fresh & local food in the long run too)! They also  have a fleet of EV's, plug-in hybrids, bio-diesel carpool buses etc. And while you work there, your vehicle get's charged by the sun from the solar cells on top of your cars parking garage - cheap and clean - elegant.

So, what about their power hungry data centers? Well, it turns out compared to other centers Google's version is twice as efficiency offering a reduced footprint through many additive things like improved air flow, PV systems, optimized network architecture and simply running their AC's a little less. Yes, if you work at Google's data centers you can come with   shorts to work. 

The Future - Biodegradable Computers?

Google is also very proactive towards reducing every computers energy consumption and  is supporting  the Climate Savers Computing Initiative which saved 32 Million tons of CO2 equivalent of an electricity bill of about $2 Billion. With more and more consumer products becoming biodegradable, e.g. you might have seen those bottles, spoons and even car seats, maybe computers housings of the future will be entirely compostable soon too.    

Shaping the Grid of Tomorrow

While these actions might sound like small contributions here comes the large scale outing - Google invested close to 1 Billion dollars in renewable energies. Just to bring this number into perspective that is more than half (55%) of DOE's budget for renewable energy technology research in FY2012. Let's talk about some selected investments here that caught my interest. 

Just last week an announcement came out that Google invested $94 Million in a large scale PV system in area of California's capitol, Sacramento producing 84 MW of clean power equivalent to powering 13,000 homes. There are two things that are interesting about this: (i) it is the first large scale PV installation that feeds the power back into the grid and not to the home owner for personal use, and (ii) it uses a smart and incentivizing billing model which worked for Germany a few years ago, that is so called Feed-In-Tariffs (FIT). This FIT guarantees the PV operator a fixed price upon feeding in the power from the solar cell back into the grid for a guaranteed duration, here 20 years. Such incentivizing programs lower the risk for the return-on-investment and spur technology adoption for a 'green' grid.

Another major investment ($75 Million) targets to reduce the inherently large barrier-to-entry for homeowners in financing a solar-roof system. The company Clean Solar Finance (CSF) received the push and here is how it works: Imagine you have a house and want a PV system, but are unable or unwilling to take the risks of such an investment (~$30,000) - this is where CSF comes in; you choose a system from their catalog, a contracted PV installation company puts the system on your roof ready for you to use, but Google owns it, thus you pay a monthly fee. A similar business model was set in play when Solar City received a $280 Million investment serving 8,000 homes with zero carbon emission energy. Solar City is an full service PV system provider which leases the solar panels to home owners. The smart business move from Google was to find the right way to spread renewable energy adoption (their goal & motivation) without having to deal with the actual installations and contracting, which is done by companies like CSF and Solar City. 

Just for the record, Google also invested strongly into other renewable energy source such as wind power and concentrated Solar-Thermal energy which can be found here. 

A 'Green' Future with Google Apps & Products 

Google claims to be a carbon free company, which should be a model for many other companies. Google's efforts are three-tiered: (i) reduce emissions through improved efficiencies, (ii) increase renewable energy use on-campus and in transportation (see above), and (iii) buy carbon offsets for those emissions that are left. Furthermore, using many cloud computing apps and services Google, and other such services, do directly and indirectly help to reduce our modern societies carbon footprint. 

Example - think about Google maps and route planner can not only show you a short-cut on the road, but have also the option to find directions and path ways for walkers/runners and bikers, thus incentivizing such clean transportation means. The good old email is certainly 'greener' than mailing and delivering a message via snail-mail. Or think about Google Doc's.; now, you and your colleagues can work on the same project or with the same data without having to physically meet, the video and voice chat options complement such 'green' and, let's admit it, convenient work environments. Lastly, the SketchUp App is been successfully used by architects, building designers and solar companies towards evaluating sustainable design options and the feasibility for 'green' concepts. 

In Conclusion, it is evident that the Google corporation lives a 'green' mindset and is utilizing its position towards promoting and incentivizing a 'greening' of its employees, business operations, the grid, and people like you and me worldwide. In this energy revolution, is is obvious that Google is playing a major part. GGG - Go Green Google!

p.s. And yes, the time is definitely now!