Google has announced its expanding renewable energy in its energy consumption and planning for a 24/7 carbon-free future in 5 years. 24/7 Carbon-free Energy Compact means to fully decarbonize electricity systems. The Compact already has increasing support from stakeholders, energy buyers and suppliers, governments, system operators, solutions providers, investors, and other organizations to remodel global electricity grids to full decarbonization.
Google powering up new clean energy
Google signed its first agreement to purchase 114 MW of wind power in Iowa in 2010. This deal made them an early pioneer of corporate power purchase agreements. The company made contracts directly with green energy companies where they operate its data centers, to purchase renewable energy. It achieved 100% annual renewable energy matching every year since 2017, now they are focused on reaching the goal of 24/7 carbon-free energy (CFE) by 2030.
Google has been using wind and solar resources in Europe and South America and a battery-based system for backup power at a greater-scale data center, located in St. Ghislain, Belgium. This led to a major leap forward for clean data centers. On some occasions when a Google data center is affected by a power outage, the cleaner solution can help keep the internet up and running. When the batteries aren’t being used for backup power, they can be used to help local grid operators balance the grid.
Projects like these are very important in its journey to achieve 24/7 CFE by 2030 and, more broadly, to perform net zero emissions across all the operations and value chain by 2030. The company’s five data centers across the globe are already operating at nearly 90% CFE, and the customers can now choose where their cloud services are delivered based on the availability of carbon-free energy in each of the cloud regions.