Google has today announced in an official blog post that it has achieved its target of buying 100% renewable energy, a goal which it had committed to just over a year ago. The company also highlighted that its purchase of wind and solar energy far exceeded the amount of energy it consumed at its offices and data centres around the world in 2017.
Instead of powering all of its energy consumption with renewable energy, Google actually matches what it consumes with equal amounts of purchased renewable energy. “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”.
Google says that it signs contracts for new renewable energy generation projects in markets where it has operations every year.
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.
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.
Apple’s new ‘Spaceship’ HQ, also known as the Apple Park, is also powered by 100% renewable energy with the company committed to bringing four gigawatts of renewable power online by 2020.
