Google aims for carbon neutrality this year

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 20 June 2007 07:22

Your IT - Home IT

With various organisations and nations setting goals for reducing their carbon footprint over a period of years or even decades, Google is getting stuck in with a plan to achieve carbon neutrality in six months.

The company is taking a broad view of its carbon footprint, and is including emissions from things like employee commuting and the manufacture of the servers it uses.

A three-pronged strategy is being adopted.

Reduced energy consumption through improved efficiency covers efforts such as the Climate Savers computing initiative, the provision of commuter bus services, and a rebate for employees that purchase fuel-efficient vehicles.

Renewable energy is being backed with projects such as the recent completion of America's largest corporate solar panel installation at the Googleplex in Mountain View capable of producing 1.6 megawatts (around one-third of the peak demand), plus a longer term goal of creating 50 megawatts of new renewable generation capacity by 2012.

Carbon trading will be used to offset any shortfall in the other two measures. "To be clear, we see carbon offsets not as a permanent solution but rather as a temporary tool which allows us to take full responsibility for our impact right away," said Urs Hoelzle, senior vice president, operations, "we want to make sure that our offset funding directly enables the project, and that the carbon savings of the project are real."

The company's philanthropic arm, Google.org, is also working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy efficiency and support clean energy sources.

It's significant that Google didn't say it would "try" to become carbon neutral, using instead an unequivocal "will". The company may or may not achieve the target by its self-imposed deadline, but there can be little doubt that such a clear statement is more likely to be rewarded with success than a fuzzier goal would be.