The COP21 climate conference from Paris is still not over, but we’re already witnessing big announcements when it comes to clean energy. After Bill Gates’ announcement regarding the plans to install 300 gigawatts of renewable capacity in Africa by 2030, it’s Google’s turn to announce a spectacular move, according to The Washington Post.
The search engine giant, which can be considered the leader of corporate clean energy purchasing, is looking forward to power everything it does with this type of energy, as stated by the same source.
Your searches are powered by wind!
Google signed global “power purchase agreement”, with the purpose of buying energy generated by wind, in long term contracts, in order to use it, directly or indirectly, for powering its data centers, well know for consuming impressive amounts of energy. Keeping it short, most of the things you’re doing online are powered by wind and solar energy.
Until date, the company bought around 1.2 gigawatts of clean energy, from sources all over the world. Also, they have committed to purchase more renewable energy than any other company. The latest deal is adding over 0.8 gigawatts to the total, reaching an impressive amount of 2 gigawatts.
“These are global deals on 3 continents, 6 deals in total, in the U.S. and Chile and Sweden,” said Michael Terrell, leader of energy policy and market strategy in Google’s infrastructure team.
Even more clean energy will be bought until 2025
And they won’t stop here, as Google is planning to triple the amount of clean energy they’re using by 2025, already making progress in this direction.
Still, they’re not the only company to rely on wind and the Sun. Over the past years, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Ikea or Walmart have also used these power sources.
“Google’s leadership has helped spark a race among global IT companies to build a renewably-powered internet, and shows how companies can help lead the way to a 100 percent renewable energy future,” said chief IT analyst for Greenpeace, Gary Cook.
