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Google says it will run entirely on renewable energy in 2017

• jobu 10y ago
  Unlike carbon-based power, Mr. Kava said, wind supply prices do not fluctuate, enabling Google to plan better. Can someone explain this? It seems like wind energy prices should fluctuate based on weather patterns (more wind == lower prices).
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • pramsey 10y ago
    From a long-term point of view, the cost of the wind energy is just the depreciation of the turbines plus the maintenance costs on the farm. Those two dollar inputs will create a fairly predictable number of kilowatt hours output. The problem of getting those kwh when you want/need them is one of selling into the grid when you have them and buying out when you need them, but I guess from the point of view of Google, they are calculating: we will consume X kwh, so we need to build X khw, and wind provides a very predictable source of those kwh. Macro vs micro.
    • knz 10y ago
      > From a long-term point of view, the cost of the wind energy is just the depreciation of the turbines plus the maintenance costs on the farm. A minor detail, but don't forget the cost of transmission. My understanding is that the US has massive wind energy potential (http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/30m_US_Wind.jpg http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/30m_US_Wind.jpg and http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/80m_wind/USwind300dpe4-11.jpg http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/80m_wind/USwind300dpe4-11.jpg) but it's not necessarily near the most densly populated regions. Building and maintaining these transmission corridors is not an insubstantial cost.
  • mwytock 10y ago
    Theyre writing long term contracts for power production which provide a fixed price for the resource developers and by consequence provide them with a fixed cost. Typically, these types of contracts, providing price certainty, are required to build develop new renewable assets.
    • sailfast 10y ago
      This. Price doesn't fluctuate for the purposes of this article because they've bought a minimum amount of electricity for a fixed price over time. (not because price of wind power never fluctuates) Similar pegged pricing can be achieved if you trade futures to hedge your price but typically this is only achievable year to year and difficult to do with electricity as it can come from so many different sources and hedging against them all may be difficult. Perhaps there's a megawatt future out there? EDIT: Yup - regionally-based electricity price hedge. Cool! http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/energy/#electricity http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/energy/#electricity
    • tedsanders 10y ago
      This is the correct answer. Price hedging is a typical feature of corporate PPAs (power purchase agreements). The aim is to reduce risk for both parties. All the other answers here are speculating without knowing how corporate energy procurement works.
  • m3ta 10y ago
    It seems the author is using the phrase "do not fluctuate" to explain wind supply prices in the same way most people think, or assume, the value of the dollar does not fluctuate. Everything fluctuates, but some things are less prone to wild fluctuation, by quite a large margin.
    • wmeredith 10y ago
      I think that statement makes sense in the context of the fossil fuel markets.
  • gleglegle 10y ago
    Once you spend the capital on wind turbine hardware and infrastructure, the price of your energy generation is fairly constant. Price on energy supply from fossil fuels always depends on the fluctuating price of those fuels, which introduces uncertainties to future costs of energy.
    • tomp 10y ago
      Price = where supply and demand cross. If there's no wind, supply goes down, so with constant demand prices will go up! That's disregarding second-order effects (e.g. other providers marking up their prices to make bigger profits, or the wind-power provider increasing its prices in the future to make up for the lost income and provide a nice return on investment).
      • coldpie 10y ago
        You can predict the supply of wind, as an average over a long enough period of time, much more easily than you can predict the supply of oil.
        • edblarney 10y ago
          "You can predict the supply of wind, as an average over a long enough period of time, much more easily than you can predict the supply of oil." Over the long haul, yes, but in real-time - no. And electricity prices to fluctuate a lot over days, weeks etc.. But indicating that 'price stability' is a point for green is not really fair, when it's almost always going to be considerably more expensive. Knowing that something is going to be 'consistent, and consistently more expensive', I don't think is a good argument for green. There are other, better arguments.
          • papercrane 10y ago
            > Over the long haul, yes, but in real-time - no. And electricity prices to fluctuate a lot over days, weeks etc.. You'd deal with this the same way you deal with it in every other commodity market, futures contracts.
  • eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    Weather fluctuates, but climate is relatively stable. As long as you have some kind of storage and base-load supply, you can plan yearly wind-power usage based more around climate than weather, at least to my understanding.
  • mbloom1915 10y ago
    this has much more to do with the locked in rate utilities/the state demands when Distributed Generation (like wind and solar) are feeding into the grid. 'wind energy prices' is vague - not sure if it is getting at the relatively low fluctuating cost of standing up a turbine, OR the flat rate wind suppliers are paid for generation (like google)
  • CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
    As others have mentioned, it is a narrow definition. The idea is that the only fluctuations occur due to uncontrollable factors (weather) which, in all fairness, do impact carbon-based power too (to varying degrees). So a war in the middle east or a trade embargo won't impact the price per kwhr. Whereas a tornado would impact both wind and oil (even if just by slowing down the deliveries). I would argue that wind (and solar (not so much hydro)) are much more susceptible to weather impact, but with sufficiently large capacitors/batteries that can be minimized.
• zitterbewegung 10y ago
  So if they increase the energy supply by investing/purchasing in renewable energy that would increase supply which would bring their energy costs down hypothetically?
  • IncRnd 10y ago
    Doubtful. You have a captive audience, so why would suppliers suddenly lower their prices?
  • mbloom1915 10y ago
    Note Google in some cases does sell electricity generated from their wind/solar investments to the locals and new FERC order allows anyone who has DG to sell into wholesale markets. Sometimes their investment is near a data center so it hits the same local feeder, othertimes they say 'we can't do DG near the data center, so lets do it somewhere else that offsets the data center demand'. This is where the renewable energy credits come in and make the long term strategy worthwhile
    • mbloom1915 10y ago
      the headline is quite misleading when you consider most google data centers still getting power from dirty sources - the 40% reduction in data center cost is impressive though (whoo AI!)
• rimher 10y ago
  I was simply shocked to read that Google as a whole consumes as much as a whole metropolis. The fact that they're going green, is awesome on their part..!
  • JonFish85 10y ago
    "I was simply shocked to read that Google as a whole consumes as much as a whole metropolis." Considering that they employ ~70k people, plus the hardware to run their business, that sounds about right.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • jonknee 10y ago
    Considering they provide significant computing resources for the entire world it's not that surprising.
  • sp332 10y ago
    Microsoft's new US-East datacenter expansion will be over a mile long.
  • user5994461 10y ago
    I am equally surprised... that they only consume one metropolis. I'd expect much more than that given the size of their operations. i.e. just running the entire world.
  • walshemj 10y ago
    Why datacentres are not massive consumers compared to some energy consumers my first job had a single experiment that had from memory 2x .25 MW pumps - and blew out the electricity supply for Cranfield uni when we did the first test run.
• mbloom1915 10y ago
  This article is far more accurate and helpful: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-will-achieve-100-percent-renewable-energy-in-2017 https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-will-ach...
• nradov 10y ago
  This is great progress and congratulations to Google. But Google and every other tech company is effectively still running on non-renewable energy by virtue of importing most of their hardware from places where manufacturing is done mostly with fossil fuels. All of us are outsourcing our pollution and CO2 production.
  • awqrre 10y ago
    The hardware for green energy production included, like solar panels... Since they don't last for ever and need lots of energy to be produced, I wonder how long it takes to just get even.
    • maxerickson 10y ago
      It varies considerably with the installation location. Modern panels in decent locations are under 4 years. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf
      • astrodust 10y ago
        California in general is a fantastic location for solar. Only places like Nevada and Hawaii are better.
    • hannob 10y ago
      For Solar it obviously depends on a lot of factors (where you put them, which technology, where it is produced), but it's in the range of 0-4 years, depending on which study you look at. Common lifetime is ~20-30 years. See e.g. https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/de/downloads/pdf-files/aktuelles/photovoltaics-report-in-englischer-sprache.pdf https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/de/downloads/pdf-files/aktuell... http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf http://www.volker-quaschning.de/datserv/kev/index.php http://www.volker-quaschning.de/datserv/kev/index.php
      • tgb 10y ago
• sabujp 10y ago
  umm, so do I! I only buy green power from PG&E!
• Symmetry 10y ago
  I wonder to what extent Google can shift calculations around in time to take advantage of fluctuations in power generation. Serving cat videos might be something you do all the time but indexing the web and training Go AIs doesn't have to be a continuous process.
  • eroiusghs 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure they can't turn the tap off when it comes to web indexing. And I also doubt the major cost for google is electric power for the machines doing the indexing - the power bill is probably negligible in the big picture of Googles business (if not I'll stort their stock)
    • Symmetry 10y ago
      It doesn't matter how the power bills compare to their overall bills, what mattes is how much power costs compare to hardware costs in terms of whether it makes sense to shift those things that don't have to be done in realtime.
• barney54 10y ago
  For Google to say that it will run entirely on renewable energy is not accurate. Thank goodness only the headline of the article says that, but the article explains that Google gets electricity from the grid--which is not 100% renewable.
  • thinkcontext 10y ago
    Perhaps a more accurate formulation would be "all of the money Google spends on electricity will go to renewable production".
  • awj 10y ago
    Electricity is fungible. Google is expecting to contribute back as much renewable energy as they are consuming from grid sources. I would expect their usage to be higher if they were trying to store renewable power to maintain a base load, but that doesn't seem like enough to outright dispute the article/claim like this.
  • akiselev 10y ago
    It may not be "accurate" in a naive technical sense but it's not disingenuous. KWh are fungible and electrons don't care who uses their voltage potential for work as long as it goes somewhere. Every KWh that Google produces with solar is a KWh the fossil fuel power plants don't produce CO2 for, which is the entire point: a net zero impact on CO2 emissions for one of the largest pieces of computer infrastructure in the world.
• metaphorm 10y ago
  they're doing this financially, not through infrastructure building. the plan is to purchase equivalent dollar value of credits from renewable electricity suppliers. this highlights a significant issue: grid power is fungible and power sources are indistinct from the end-user's point of view. is there some kind of auditing authority that can actually guarantee that the money spent is actually going towards electrical generation and isn't just slush-fund cash that financial holding companies play around with while nominally saying "green energy"?
  • syncsynchalt 10y ago
    There's a REC market, and "production" of those certificates is tied 1:1 to input into the grid, which is metered and monitored by the applicable interconnect (as a necessity for its operation). When you purchase these renewable energy credits you're essentially bidding up a bonus for producers of the appropriate energy, above and beyond the price they got for the electricity itself. Google has entered some long-term contracts for the acquisition of these credits from renewable energy providers, which in the short term bids up the price of credits for everyone else and in the longer term leads to more and larger renewable energy producers. Also note that Google isn't doing this entirely via the credits markets — it's also reducing its usage and where applicable is working with energy providers to create nearby generation.
  • ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    The technical term for this is "additionality", making sure they pay to add renewable capability, not just use up a share of the renewable energy that was already being produced and Google accounts for it when planning their purchases. They give some details on this here: https://blog.google/topics/environment/google-green-blog-what-it-means-to-be_8/ https://blog.google/topics/environment/google-green-blog-wha...
• marcoperaza 10y ago
  The title is misleading. They will not run entirely on renewable energy. Instead, they are buying at least as much renewable energy as they are consuming in total. So Google might pay for 1 megawatt of solar power going into the grid, but actually pull 1 megawatt of fossil fuel power. This is more than a nitpicking point. The reason why renewable energy isn't a totally viable energy source is because of problems with reliability, predictability, geographic concentration of production, etc. It is highly misleading to give people the impression that an operation like Google can actually operate directly off exclusively renewable energy. What Google is doing will eventually hit a cap and become zero sum. You still need fossil fuels (or nuclear) to support a reliable and dispersed grid, and can therefore only have a a certain percent of the grid powered by renewables. So if you want your company to "run entirely on renewable energy", you'll end up in a bidding war with other companies that want the same thing, to be the technical purchaser (not consumer!) of the renewable energy going into the grid.
  • Brakenshire 10y ago
    > The reason why renewable energy isn't a totally viable energy source is because of problems with reliability, predictability, geographic concentration of production, etc. It is highly misleading to give people the impression that an operation like Google can actually operate directly off exclusively renewable energy. That's true in general, but not if you can choose where you are using the electricity. If your datacentres are in Iceland (geothermal), the Middle East (reliable solar), certain parts of Canada, or Norway (hydroelectric), you could actually run the systems entirely off renewables. I agree though that buying 1 unit of renewable power for each unit that you use is a much less meaningful action. Not to be sniffed at, but not what is being implied.
  • ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    They also buy in the general location of their datacenters. It doesn't always match up exactly, but they are aiming for slightly better than just a purely numerical correspondence.
    • marcoperaza 10y ago
• em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
  I don't have to feel guilty when using google services anymore!
• deegles 10y ago
  Google is ahead of the game here. Other tech companies also are moving to renewables but they're not at 100% yet (IIRC). The key point is that as cloud computing becomes commoditized and people build tools to quickly transfer from one cloud provider to another, the profit margin will become smaller and smaller until energy costs dominate the cost to provide a service. It is already the case that a machine will use more in energy costs than its capital cost over its lifetime. So, whoever has the cheapest power will be able to provide cheapest services, or charge more for capacity located in more energy-expensive regions (for latency).
  • rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    Perhaps more importantly, because of the necessity for data centers to always be reliably online, this could help push for better grid-level energy storage solutions, the true Holy Grail of sustainable energy. Renewables are effectively second-class citizens in the energy world until they can match the reliable storage capacity available from dead dinosaur.
  • JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    > whoever has the cheapest power will be able to provide cheapest services One of the reasons the UAE pitches itself as a data centre site.
    • rshaban 10y ago
      Yes, because servers love hot, humid, dusty climates!
  • edblarney 10y ago
    "So, whoever has the cheapest power will be able to provide cheapest services" While it's a good point, I don't entirely agree with it. More apt: renewables are not cheap. They are very expensive in almost all parts of the Western world.
  • coda_ 10y ago
    I agree that they are ahead of the game. Combined Cycle Gas Turbine generators are still the most economic way to produce electricity... though carbon tax and renewable subsidies do tip the scale in some markets. I don't think they are purely doing this for cheap electricity... at least not right now. I believe in what they are doing, and think it will help facilitate a transition to more efficient renewables eventually, but I don't believe they are doing this for the economic benefit right now... it's a good PR move that could also pay off financially in the long run... in my opinion.
• 1_2__3 10y ago
  So it's going to spend money to make it look like renewables make economic sense? My reading of it is that this is a PR move more than anything else.
• ChuckMcM 10y ago
  This is pretty awesome, Google is definitely leading the industry here. One of the more interesting things I learned while working for Google was the intricate way in which the "grid" is managed by a separate but co-operating set of entities. Google disrupted that happy bunch by creating a wholly owned subsidiary that was a licensed power company[1]. That gave it standing to buy from and sell energy to the grid and it completely short circuited a lot of crazy negotiations that were going on between Google and various regional power companies. Now instead of having the substation outside the data center owned by the local power company it could be owned by "Google Energy Inc." And Google Energy could buy energy from any vendor connected to that grid. Most people are familiar with the 'last mile' problem where the connection to the Internet from your house has to go through the local monopoly utility. The same is true when buying power, and this move on Google's part completely side stepped it. [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/google-energy-subsidiary-considers-clean-power/ https://www.cnet.com/news/google-energy-subsidiary-considers...
  • peterjs 10y ago
    Is it? Intel has been purchasing large quantities of green energy for years. In the last few year it has been 100% of the their overall consumption [1]. Is there any difference in what the two companies are trying to achieve? [1] https://www.epa.gov/greenpower/green-power-partnership-national-top-100 https://www.epa.gov/greenpower/green-power-partnership-natio...
    • mtgx 10y ago
      Biomass is considered "green energy"? Why?! Also that chart is US-only, while the story about Google here is that Google will go 100% renewable energy globally.
      • ZeroGravitas 10y ago
        Depends on how the biomass is generated, but stuff that was just going to decompose anyway, like pig slurry, might as well be processed into a form that can be burnt for energy.
• firmbeliever 10y ago
  So if they are still getting their power from the grid, who uses the renewable energy that they purchase?
  • wilonth 10y ago
    The grid itself. So in the end it pretty much means that they're actually running on renewables. If everyone does what Google does, the utilities could just stop producing fossil fuel electricity entirely and the world would actually consume zero electricity from fossil fuel. You don't have to be a monk to master mindfulness and meditation.
    • firmbeliever 10y ago
      Thanks. Does this mean that Google is essentially subsidizing the cost of producing renewable energy, and if so, does that then mean that the consumers of the renewable energy end up paying less because of said subsidy? I'm just trying to follow where that money is actually going and how it's actually shifting overall usage from fossil fuels to renewable.
      • philipkglass 10y ago
        Renewable project developers want long term power purchase agreements (PPAs) so they have predictable revenue for projects they plan to develop. These are agreements that go something like "for the next 15 years, we agree to buy up to X megawatt hours per year from your project for Y dollars per megawatt hour." There are other ways to sell output from renewables (like bidding output directly into the electricity spot market) but developers overwhelmingly prefer PPAs. Google has signed a bunch of PPAs: https://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/29/google-signs-225-mw-wind-power-purchase-agreement-invenergy/ https://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/29/google-signs-225-mw-win... Once the developer has signed PPAs they can finance the up-front construction cost. PPAs enable the construction and operation of new renewable energy projects. Of course the output of large scale renewable facilities is mixed with other sources of electricity in a transmission system; it doesn't directly replace coal. (But this is true of any electricity project in a competitive market: when a company builds a new natural gas plant, they don't detach the transmission wires from a competitor's older coal plant and attach them to the new gas turbine.) Instead it's pricing effects that indirectly decrease use of dirtier fossils when a grid adds renewable capacity. Solar and wind plants have very low variable costs; they'll supply every MWh they can to the grid, and get paid for every one of them via the previously signed PPAs. But fossil generators have significant variable costs for fuel and for labor[1], so when renewables are producing high output there may not be enough demand to cover the marginal costs of production. Fossil plants reduce or stop production when that happens, so they burn less fuel and produce less emissions. Fossil plants with high enough marginal costs may shut down for extended periods, like some plants that are only used for e.g. meeting peak demand during the winter heating season. Costs rise over time as aging equipment needs additional maintenance or full replacement. Fossil plants with high enough costs eventually can't turn a profit even serving the peak-demand-season niche and are completely retired and scrapped. Even if an old coal plant is replaced by a new coal plant, it's still an environmental win to get the old ones shut down, because (even under the new president) a coal plant that starts construction in 2017 won't get the weaker grandfathered pollution standards of one constructed in 1957, and the newer plant will produce more electricity per ton of fuel due to technical advances. [1] At least coal plants have significant labor costs. Modern CCGT natural gas plants are quite labor-thrifty too.
• sebnukem2 10y ago
  How could Google, with all its smart employees, buy into the Chinese hoax? /s
• downandout 10y ago
  >"It’s good for the economy, good for business and good for our shareholders". Let's be honest...it is not good for their shareholders. They are buying power at a significant premium and costing their shareholders money. It is a direct hit to the bottom line. This might be good for the environment - at the very least they are helping renewable energy companies get bank financing through purchase guarantees, which will advance the technologies being used and perhaps one day make them economically viable. But to say it's good for shareholders is disingenuous. >"In some places, like Chile, Google said, renewables have at times become cheaper than fossil fuels." I love all of the hedging that comes with any article that tries to paint renewables as economical. This sentence has holes a truck could drive through. It could literally mean that at one point, years ago, Chile had extremely high gas prices for a week and Google was amazed that their bill for that week was lower than it would have been with conventional power sources.
  • parhurs 10y ago
    Well, it all depends on the definition of good. Shareholders are people too, and for now, live on planet Earth and are thus affected by Google's energy usage. Also, from a economic perspective, the good can come from e.g. brand acceptance (and other indirect sources).
    • philipkglass 10y ago
      I'm guessing it really is good for shareholders in the simplest terms of dollars too; unsubsidized wind and solar electricity have only recently started to reach cost parity but with tax incentives the PPAs being signed really are less expensive than long term contracts for fossil electricity. So it's good for the environment and good for shareholders. (I'd be more sympathetic to complaints about the tax credits offered to renewable energy if we could go back to the beginning and eliminate all tax credits offered to fossil energy too, plus properly account for their externalities, but since that's going to happen when hell freezes over I'm fine with adding another layer of tax incentives for renewables.)
  • toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Unsubsidized wind power is driving nuclear power and coal out of business. Unsubsidized! Solar is still a bit more expensive, but will continue to decline in price each year. Investing in solar on your roof, in most markets, in a better investment than the S&P500 (EDIT: Utility solar has costs approaching 2 cents/kwh and still declining). Google is doing their shareholders a service by hedging their energy costs, no different than when Delta (the airline) bought a refinery.
• tylercubell 10y ago
  > “In my mind it’s a P.R. gimmick,” said Chris Warren, vice president of communications at the Institute for Energy Research, a think tank in Washington supported largely by donations from individuals and companies in the fossil fuel industry. “If they think they can actually support themselves with wind and solar panels, they should connect them directly to their data centers.” I love how the author throws in a disclaimed quotation from a big oil Luddite to help reinforce the message of the article. It's a two-fold sales tactic. 1. Discredit the opposition. 2. Tell the buyer what the opposition will say, after already convincing them of the benefits, so they're prepared to defend what they're buying thereby reinforcing their beliefs. I'm not implying that the article is wrong, but it's something we should be aware of.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • blazespin 10y ago
    Yeah, or maybe Big Oil is just pretty evil.
    • philipkglass 10y ago
      I'd say the opposition right now is mostly Big Coal. If all coal and oil electrical generating capacity shut down and were replaced by renewables + gas it would be a net win for the oil and gas industry, because oil is a tiny fraction of electricity production and coal retirements boost gas demand. Gas is a flexible electricity source and a good complement to renewables. But a decade from now natural gas might be facing a significant competitive threat from renewables + storage.
      • r00fus 10y ago
        Big Coal and Big Oil work together far more often than not. Extensive renewable energy would eliminate the massive profit of power utilities and refineries both.
        • 10y ago
• exabrial 10y ago
  Part of me hopes this will help drive a nuclear renaissance too: we can power an aircraft carrier, why not a submarine?
  • edblarney 10y ago
    They definitely do have nuclear power submarines :). The issue is not submarines, it's computers, lights, cars for the rest of us. Google has a side-show project I think related to nuclear, but it's an extremely regulated thing so it's hard.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• edpichler 10y ago
  > Next year, it said, all of that energy will come from wind farms and solar panels. When I read 'Renewable' on the title, I thought they would use hydroelectric energy too. Nice to know I was wrong.
  • throwaway729 10y ago
    They might be using some form of pumped hydro -- it's a common storage technique for wind and solar farms.
• onesiteco 10y ago
  They could pay some taxes too :)
• kumarski 10y ago
  There's a considerable amount of embodied energy and embodied pollution in Solar Panel and Wind Turbine construction. I think this is lost on most people in Silicon Valley.
  • ori_b 10y ago
    Got a better alternative?
    • LightskinKanye 10y ago
      They have billions but aren't sponsoring scholarships for graduate physics degrees like Boeing or any "corporate" company does. If they want to see their 10xs breakthroughs (which they sure talk a lot about) they should be throwing money at condensed matter physics research and just support in general for physics. Its easy to get a 10x in software but energy is a whole different game. That way the smartest people won't have to decide between taking a high paying engineering/programming job or going into physics. It all comes down to probabilities and the amount of people in the field is really the best approach towards making a breakthrough.
      • kumarski 10y ago
        high paying code writing or going into physics/engineering. Engineering is much different than software architecture. One requires hard sciences competency, whereas one you can go into for years with none, and be successful.
        • LightskinKanye 10y ago
          But when the smartest undergrads are looking at potential career choices they see engineering and CS as means to a good life. Without the support and money from companies who care, many will choose the highest paying option
        • walshemj 10y ago
          I think you will find that doing what google does at scale does require some "hard science" :-)
• perseusprime11 10y ago
  Is this Google U.S or Google worldwide that will run entirely on renewable energy? Google has offices and data computing centers worldwide so I am reading this as everywhere.
• cheeseprocedure 10y ago
  Are there public-facing data on the total energy footprint of an Amazon/Google/etc datacenter, including the lifecycle of the hardware hosted there?
  • SamPhillips 10y ago
    Greenpeace has some basics but not that level of detail. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/click-clean/ http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/click-clean/
• dafrankenstein2 10y ago
  Green Earth, Our Earth :)
• rgzn 10y ago
  This story is clearly political.
  • civilian 10y ago
    My thoughts exactly :) It's not like "politics" has the same impact that the latest season of Game of Thrones has, or the latest Futball results. Law and government define how businesses can operate, and public sentiment for or against a cause can make a company look good or bad and thus garner regulatory scrutiny or passivity.
    • adrienne 10y ago
      Hilarious that pointing out to techbros that a political story is political gets you flagged and killed. More indication that what HN means by "politics" is "anything techbros don't like thinking about".
      • mzw_mzw 10y ago
        Please don't use sexist epithets on HN.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    • bradleybuda 10y ago
      From a technical perspective, all energy is the same. The renewable nature of energy only becomes meaningful when viewed through a political lens. No politics on HN this week I thought?
• ctdonath 10y ago
  Is anyone discussing _reliability_? as in Google/Apple/etc are making this move not just "to be green" but to ensure that they do have power without being subjected to the whims & issues of providers when they're just one of many customers? When you have literally hundreds of millions (billions?) of customers, you want to ensure your own resources are absolutely reliable (within your, not someone else's, requirements). It's like me wanting to put solar panels on my roof: I'm not so much interested in cost savings, but want to ensure a massive grid failure doesn't take my household with it.
  • LightskinKanye 10y ago
    You do realize in the event of a grid failure your solar panels don't work? You can either be grid tied or off grid.
    • acchow 10y ago
      Doesn't a battery give you some leeway to swap freely between buying/selling electricity off the grid and running-off-grid-from-battery?
      • LightskinKanye 10y ago
        Yes it acts as a sort of firewall between the two systems. But at that cost you may as well just have 2 systems. One off grid and one grid-tied given you have the space.
  • peter303 10y ago
    They arent running directly on renewables, but paying others to use as much renewables as they would use
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• EGreg 10y ago
  Google is definitely leading the way! Now if only we can get our municipal fiber and self driving cars sooner..
• raisedbyninjas 10y ago
  Another energy feather in Google's (and Dell's) cap was evangelizing on server room temperature. Recommending allowing air temps to climb up to 95F cuts a lot of the air cooling energy use. It also makes it more comfortable for those of use doomed to work in a chilled server room.
• EGreg 10y ago
  You know my whole thing is about sustainability and looking to technology in the near future to shatter the conventional wisdom and assumptions of capitalism (and other systems) from the last several decades? It's not as simple as saying you support companies doing this voluntarily. I also support that, very much so. But the governments have put up legal hurdles because in the past they "protected capitalism" and now just stand in the way. State courts are used by telcos to sue cities to prevent Google Fiber from coming into the city, to protect the profits of the "private" interstate corporation from the "public" city. Drug discovery and many other things are hampered by patents to protect the "intellectual property" of pharma corporations from the "freerider" researchers and public funding that would discover new cures. And so forth and so on. The legal departments and regulations of the old capitalist system (set in place to protect innovation at a different time) is in the way of open source and open innovation of the 21st century. And the biggest lie of course is jobs, that demand for human labor will never go down and that enough money will always trickle down to the plebes via wages.
• tn13 10y ago
  After energy they might focus on more landfills because of electronic waste.
• mathattack 10y ago
  Several years ago, I was very perplexed by Google investing in renewable energy. It was only later that I realized they use so much energy that this would have to be the wave of the future for tech companies like them. If they don't use renewables, they'll be subjects to the whims of energy markets similar to airlines. (Yes you can hedge, but even that is a bet) Very forward looking of them!
• mikebay 10y ago
  And more profitable services. Could google also pay taxes like other companies ? Or was that a bit too much to ask ?
• problems 10y ago
  Wondering if any residential provider in the world is offering a service where you can say "sell me only renewables". There'd probably be a cost associated with this, but I think I'd have to consider it if it were available locally.
  • detaro 10y ago
    These are quite common here in Germany.
    • problems 10y ago
      What's the cost increase like? Do you know anyone doing it?
      • detaro 10y ago
        Cost depends, I just used some random price search site to compare a few things, I hope that's somewhat useful data. Assuming 3500 kWh/year yearly price would be 1095 € for the local "default contract" [1] 1060 € for a one-year contract from the local default provider 1080 € for their "eco option" 792 € for the cheapest offer overall [2] 855 € for the cheapest 100 % renewable 1040 € for a reputable 100 % renewable provider that has the certification supported by most environmental organisations [1] with no minimum contract length, generally relatively expensive since they are the "lazy" option and you can switch out at any time. Basically, if you don't have any other contract they are legally obligated to give you this one. [2] (which is tricksy, since it is a package deal with massive overage fees, not mostly a flat fee per kWh like the others) So there is quite a potential for savings by picking the right provider, and high-quality eco options are among the more expensive ones, but if you do research you probably can find a compromise you like. E.g. the expensive eco providers often earmark 3 % or so of the price for long-term investments in building their own projects, instead of only reselling electricity provided by others, which of course adds on top and some people want to support. Some accept biogas as a power source, others don't. And since many people never cared and pay the default deals, when they think about switching for eco reasons the shock isn't as big, because they often can save and get something 100 % renewable. Many people are willing to pay 20-50 € extra and go for that if available. The expensive options obviously have fewer customers, but I know people from all categories.
• ziikutv 10y ago
  Is it Google US only or all offices
• wicksell 10y ago
  It's certainly a good thing they're doing, but really all they're doing is bidding higher than other companies on renewable energy, and since we don't have unlimited renewable energy (only as much as we have wind turbines and solar panel arrays &c), all they're really doing is shifting renewable energy usage from smaller companies to themselves. It's not like they're creating renewable energy or anything, they're just changing where it goes. But at least they're going to create a greater demand to hopefully create a greater supply sometime soon, plus they're paying into the renewable energy economic machine.
  • philipkglass 10y ago
    No, Google has been signing power purchase agreements with renewable energy developers. The signed agreements are what developers need to build new solar and wind projects. It's new renewable demand driving new supply.
• ubernostrum 10y ago
  Environmentalism is a political topic. Get it off HN.
• Chuckalucky89 10y ago
  "means other companies of a similar scale will feel pressure to move" - Not sure if that pressure is real, especially with a new president not really committed to renewable and sustainable energy adoption.
• at-fates-hands 10y ago
  I'm actually surprised that Google hasn't been more involved in micro-grid technology. One company here in town basically runs on its own grid with a combination of renewable energies and electricity they generate on their own: http://www.oati.com/about/microgrid-technology-center http://www.oati.com/about/microgrid-technology-center The main difference between the OATI Microgrid Technology Center and other commercial office buildings is that OATI will generate its own electricity as the primary source of power. The building is powered by: - Natural Gas turbines: 600kW Capstone C600 natural gas burning microturbine. Paired with absorption chiller and heat exchanger for CCHP - Solar: 150kw rooftop solar array, with additional expansion array planned - Wind: 24kW of vertical axis wind turbines - Electricity storage: 231kWh, at 125kW Ensync battery rated power and energy - Generator: 1500kW of diesel backup generator - Utility connection: Connected to local utility Xcel Energy
• mikebay 10y ago
  Google news everyday? who really is interested when they cheat taxes on every country, Hide search results, deleting peoples accounts, sell your privacy information and partnering with NSA to spy you.. haha Big no thanks, google. Your business is censorship and spying only.