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Google’s Environmental Report
- zepto 9y agoFinally catching up with Apple.
- pier25 9y agoExcept that Foxconn still isn't building Apple products with clean energy. Apparently they will in 2018: https://www.ft.com/content/087525c4-786b-11e5-a95a-27d368e1ddf7 https://www.ft.com/content/087525c4-786b-11e5-a95a-27d368e1d...
- DannyBee 9y agoBesides the other comment, also worth staring at : https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2016/01/08/the-truth-about-apples-100-renewable-energy-usage/#4df63c2f189c https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2016/01/08/the-trut...
- IBM 9y agoNothing in this silly post doesn't also apply to Google. Google datacenters are connected to the grid as well. It's not feasible for Apple stores in cities and shopping malls to be connected to solar or wind farms. It's still all renewable energy.
- cromwellian 9y agoGoogle's datacenters are large, but they don't consume the resources needed to produce 1 billion smart phones.
- zepto 9y agoAndroid does. Google can't claim credit for Android when it likes and disown it when there are unpleasant side effects.
- DannyBee 9y agoThe parent is claiming one has to catch up to the other. I am pointing out this it not actually right. You are claiming "they are both just as bad". So you don't seem to disagree with me?
- IBM 9y agoYou posted a blog post by a Randian climate change denier who authored a book called The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. I'm assuming you just searched for the first article that tries to spin Apple's environmental efforts negatively and that you don't actually endorse anything he wrote. If in fact you do, consider this: when you deposit cash in an ATM on one side of town and withdraw it from another on the other side of town, the cash may not be physically the same cash you deposited. Electrons work the same way.
- DannyBee 9y ago<A lot of words attacking this author's character> Do you actually want to address the point he makes, or the point i made (that we are talking about apple), or just want to character assassinate a person? Because it seems a lot like the latter. (If you consider him to be "not even worth discussing", then please do that instead of the character assassination, because it's not interesting, useful, or contributing to the discussion)
- evanlivingston 9y agoUsing Apple as a role model for environmental sustainability is pretty flawed. They produce a massive amount of consumer goods, all electronic based and most requiring batteries. The amount of material that must be extracted from the earth to create their gadgets is boggling. Their products must all be shipped, across oceans, across countries and into your home. Furthermore, because of their "cutting edge" manufacturing processes their products require an enormous amount of specialized tooling. Tooling for which all the materials must be extracted from the earth, shipped, smelted and so on. And then there's the packaging. Pounds and pounds of meticulously manufactured packaging per product. Where did all the glossy ink come from? Where does it go? What about the polystyrene? Or the mold used to make that inset? Production of consumer goods is pretty gnarly, no matter how it's painted by the producer. Buying a few carbon credits, using a bit of solar (the materials for which must be mined) or giving your employees electric cars or using LED lights in your offices does little to offset all the damage done by all the things I mentioned above.
- weka 9y agoGoogle has their own TLD? Not sure how I feel about that. Then again, we do have a myriad of others.
- burger_moon 9y agoDon't they own a few? .XYZ is another which Google uses for https://abc.xyz https://abc.xyz
- ipsum2 9y agoGoogle doesn't own xyz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.xyz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.xyz
- tgb 9y agoHow bizarre that the terms of use for .xyz specifically bans illegal or fraudulent defamation of Justin Bieber and Oprah Winfrey. Presumably this only covers things that were already covered by the law for everyone else, but it is still kind of baffling. I assume the two of them were involved financially with the .xyz TLD?
- CydeWeys 9y agoI think it's reactive, i.e. in response to some prior incident, not implying an ownership stake. Do you really think Justin Bieber is involved financially with the domain name registry business? I doubt it.
- farnsworth 9y agoI don't see why not, many celebrities/rich people have broad investments, especially in tech.
- tgb 9y agoThat does sound more likely.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- benatkin 9y agoAlphabet can move anything heavily polluting outside of Google and do their environmental press from Google.
- theDoug 9y agoThese reports have existed for years before Alphabet. The track record is clear. There isn't always some trick or catch. (Disclosure: I work at Google.)
- austenallred 9y ago> There isn't always some trick or catch For some reason this concept seems impossible for the majority of HN to comprehend.
- notatoad 9y agoLook at the appendix, they report three different "scopes" for emissions. yeah, they could move anything polluting to somewhere else in the alphabet umbrella, but it's still in-scope for reporting. "Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from sources we own or control, such as company vehicles or generators at Google’s offices and data centers. Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from the production of electricity we purchase to run our operations. The location-based category reflects the average carbon intensity of the grids where our operations are located and thus where our energy consumption occurs. The market-based category incorporates our procurement choices, i.e., our renewable energy purchases via contractual mechanisms like PPAs. Scope 3 emissions are indirect emissions from other sources in our value chain, such as business travel or our suppliers"
- davidsawyer 9y agoThe contrast of the text of those articles is absolutely abysmal.
- sremani 9y agoHow does a data center run fully renewable, do they have huge battery installations or is it one of those "credits" things where, their consumption is compensated by production equal amount of solar and wind contracts they signed up to?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 9y agohttps://environment.google/projects/announcement-100/ https://environment.google/projects/announcement-100/ > We were one of the first corporations to create large-scale, long-term contracts to buy renewable energy directly; we signed our first agreement to purchase all the electricity from a 114-megawatt wind farm in Iowa, in 2010. Today, we are the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy.
- strictnein 9y agoStill don't get how that works. A 114MW wind farm almost never produces 114MW. In fact, it's output is fairly unpredictable, and can swing from 10MW to 90MW and back to 20MW over the course of 30-40 minutes. When a company that requires high levels of constant power "buys" that power, what are they buying, exactly? Because they're still just as reliant on nuclear/coal/natural gas as they were before they bought that power. Are they just signing up to pay a higher rate for those 114MW of power they get from the grid?
- twohlix_ 9y agoThey are guaranteeing for that producer their power is purchased at x$/whatever for 20 years. Massively lowers the risk profile for the wind farm, and lets them focus on potentially expanding. Google is basically acting as a subsidizer of renewable energy here. So while yes they rely on the grid, they're a market force for increasing the percent of the power produced on the grid to be renewable. Every MW produced by the renewable is a MW not needed to be produced by natural gas/coal
- bbernard 9y agoBig respect for Google! Creating that site is a really cool move, and it will encourage other people to do the same. I especially like the fact that they'll mount sensors for air quality on Street View cars. And the fact that they're using almost 100% renewable energy. This is what I call leading by example.
- coldpie 9y ago> I especially like the fact that they'll mount sensors for air quality on Street View cars There was a really good article on Ars about using this to detect natural gas leaks just a couple weeks ago: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/natural-gas-is-leaking-from-city-pipes-but-spotting-leaks-is-getting-easier/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/natural-gas-is-leaki...
- apaprocki 9y agoLots of companies have been publishing sustainability reports for years now (our first was published in 2010) -- it's not unique to Google. We're on track to hit 100% renewable by 2025. Here's our site: https://www.bloomberg.com/bcause/planet/ https://www.bloomberg.com/bcause/planet/
- calichoochoo 9y agoThe office component is such b.s. that it throws the rest of the report into doubt. While solar panels and shuttles are small gestures in the right direction, Google continues to make the wrong large decisions by putting their offices in the middle of nowhere, miles from any real place, surrounded by acres of parking. The sustainable thing would be to put their buildings in cities and adjacent to mass transit so employees can walk and ride to work from their nearby homes.
- xexers 9y agoWhich offices? Most of the google offices I know about are right in city center. https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/locations/?region=north-america&office=seattle https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/locations/?region=north...
- rrdharan 9y agoDisclaimer: I work at Google but the following comments are just based on personal observation and public information. I think you're talking about the Mountain View campus and I agree it seems superficially to be an example of what you're talking about... I imagine with the benefit of hindsight and with modern (post 2000s :) sensibilities in mind both Google and Facebook would have tilted more heavily towards building up their SF presences back when that would have still been plausible/affordable. However the parking restrictions are actually enforced by municipal regulation; I believe Google and many other companies (including my previous employer, VMware) would prefer to build campuses with much less parking but they are required to have a certain ratio of parking spaces to employees due to these antiquated regulations. Meanwhile the other Google campuses are in fact located in large cities, though I believe transit access (Seattle?) is still an issue. One of the main reasons I choose to live in New York and work at the New York office is because I am a huge fan of the set up here where the office is centrally located and highly transit accessible.
- justicezyx 9y agoWhat's the point?
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- notatoad 9y agothere's some pretty shady reporting on the summary page: https://environment.google/projects/environmental-report-2016/ https://environment.google/projects/environmental-report-201... 9.2M sqft LEED certified - they display percentages for most stats, but only an absolute for this one? going to make me dig to find their total office square footage to find out what this means? Then the next stat, 31% LEED Platinum. oh good, a percentage. except it's not, it's a percentage of their LEED certified buildings. or "100% landfill diversion, in 6 of our data centres". surely google has more than 6 data centres, but let's only look at the environmental stats of the ones that are doing a good job. [The stat is 84% across all their datacentres.] "100% renewable energy". sounds good, except oh no, it's "we will achieve". What's the percentage right now? [it was 44% in 2015, the last year they report.] [edit - skimmed the report, added in some numbers to my comment] The report itself appears to be mostly the same marketing fluff, until you get down to the "environmental data" appendix on page 66, which actually looks like a pretty solid report of their environmental footprint. And it looks like they're doing a decent job, so i'm not sure why the real numbers are buried so deeply.
- mabbo 9y agoMore importantly, LEED is bullshit. LEED is a private entity that you pay to get LEED certification based on your planned designs. Once you have certification, you could build literally anything else. If you buy a LEED certified building, you could convert it to be heated and powered by burning tires and endangered animals- still LEED Certified. There is no decertification process, because that would mean spending money to reduce the number of buildings with the very-public name on it. Why would LEED ever want that?
- culturalzero 9y agoWhy am I not surprised. Funnily enough, I work in the same building as the EPA, and they advertise their LEED cert. SMH
- TommyBombadil 9y agoIt could be that their office's interior design and construction was certified LEED as opposed to the building itself. There are different types of LEED certification available so maybe this is the case in your example?
- strainer 9y agoThere is a great need to hurry up with enthusing and glamorising the most sustainable human consumables and activities and interests, by the truly effective means of our Age (mass commercial and public advertising) This also means stigmatising and depreciating many kinds of commerce and spending which have to date been marketed and defended as rightful livelihoods. It is past time to be just tending our own very fine gardens. We need to make it difficult for each other to pollute and mis-consume, like we did with smoking.
- theDoug 9y agoI agree. As soon as someone shares a number, such as with diversity, it now opens up the questions of why others yet do not or will not.
- chasingtheflow 9y agoDoes the fact that they released this on WWDC day, a high traffic tech news day, suggest there may be something in here that they're hoping gets overlooked?
- CobrastanJorji 9y agoThey are linking to it directly from the www.google.com homepage, complete with a colorful custom Google animation. If they're trying to bury this report, they're doing a very bad job of it.
- kllrnohj 9y agoI'd imaging this is more a response to Trump pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement than anything related to WWDC.
- johnspiral22 9y agoNothing in their report about the dismal lifespan of Android phones in the Western world. This alone kills any claims of being green!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jordigh 9y agoThere's something funny about them reporting market-based emissions in the appendix. Mostly, that they're reporting them all the way back to 2011 when this was only approved by 2015. It's not really a big deal, but it's a bit unusual. You can read a bit about the market-based scope 2 method here: http://www.wri.org/blog/2015/01/scope-2-changing-way-companies-think-about-electricity-emissions http://www.wri.org/blog/2015/01/scope-2-changing-way-compani... Let me explain a bit: market-based emissions are electricity power grid emissions computed the market-based method. The method measures your emissions differently depending on whether or not you bought a green instrument. Roughly speaking, green instruments are money you pay the power company that they will invest into green sources of energy, like wind and solar. Under the market-based method, if you bought a green instrument, you can then report lower emissions, as if all of your electricity only came from the green energy you purchased. Conversely, if an instrument was available for purchase but you didn't buy one, your emissions will look like they all came from non-green sources of energy, like coal (these are called residual emissions). Of course, this is all a bit of an accounting lie: when you use the power grid, you can't tell the power company to not send you electricity from their coal power plant. Therefore, you also have to report your location-based emissions, which is the "normal" reporting that has been used in all previous years and is still being used. Roughly speaking, the location-based method is, take the total emissions of the entire power grid you're using, and multiply that by your fractional of the power usage of the grid over all other customers. Your emissions are then computed as your proportion of all green and non-green emissions that the entire power grid produces. The market-based method is supposed to incentivise companies to buy green instruments because they can then report lower emissions under one method. The purchase of green instruments in turn is supposed to incentivise power companies to invest in green energy. The whole thing, however, is kind of based on an accounting "trick". This is why the greenhouse gas analysts at my job aren't huge fans of the market-based method. WRI was pressured by many industry leaders to adopt the market-based method as part of the reporting protocol. If Google is reporting market-based emissions all the way back to 2011, way before it was approved last year, I wouldn't be surprised if they were one of the companies that lobbied WRI to include the market-based method. They are also mentioned as a motivating example in that link above.
- hellbanner 9y agoHow did Google get a TLD? I read https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/26/google_turns_on_google_internet_extension/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/26/google_turns_on_goo... Can anyone do this with enough $?
- niklasrde 9y agoYeah, pretty much. There was an application process to go through as well, but if it's your trademark it's pretty much yours. (Though who knows when the next round of application opens..) I believe we own our TLD as well, but don't use it, yet - it's for brand protection. If you have a look at my comment history and deduce my employer, you might understand why with our name...
- linkregister 9y agoI wonder why you wanted interested commenters to look through your history. You thought you would be viewed as shilling for BBC?
- ksullivan 9y agoHey everyone! I'm a developer at Aclima. We are working with Google on the mobile sensing tech talked about here: https://environment.google/projects/airview/ https://environment.google/projects/airview/ Honestly I'm really excited about it, but of course I'm just a tiny bit biased :) If anyone has any questions I would love to do the best I can to answer them. Cheers!
- artursapek 9y agoIs Google the only large company to own its own TLD?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tomjakubowski 9y agoNo, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains#Brand_top-level_domains https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_d... for many more examples (.amex, .bmw, .canon, ...) Google is certainly making more public of use their TLD than many of those other brands, though.
- awqrre 9y agoWhen they talk about refurbished components, are they really refurbished or just "overstock" sold as refurbished? It just seems odd that there would be that many refurbished components... or maybe they don't do that many server upgrades and just replace the whole things.