Google beats Microsoft to eliminating carbon legacy by 30 years

While Microsoft has made much of its goal to become carbon neutral by 2030 and to have reversed their legacy emissions by 2050, Google has been quietly practising what Microsoft has been preaching.

Google has in fact been carbon neutral since 2007, and today the company announced that it has eliminated its “carbon legacy” completely by purchasing carbon offsets for all the emissions ever created by its data centres and campuses.

As of today, Google is the 1st major company to eliminate our entire carbon legacy, including before we became carbon neutral in 2007. We’re also proud that by 2030, we aim to operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy in our data centers & campuses worldwide. https://t.co/j9HlkWrB2X

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) September 14, 2020

Google’s data centres still use energy produced with fossil fuel, but the company offsets these routinely with carbon credits. They are however planning to become truly carbon neutral by 2030, by only using carbon-free energy.

To achieve this difficult goal, Google will increase its use of battery storage, pair wind and solar and use AI to optimise its energy use.

In addition, Google also plans to:

• bring five gigawatts of carbon-free energy to its key manufacturing regions by 2030
• help more than 500 cities and local governments around the globe reduce one gigaton of carbon emissions annually
• help commercial building and data centre owners use AI to reduce energy use.

Read Google’s full announcement here.

via Engadget.