Google LLC said today it has managed to achieve its goal of buying enough renewable energy to match the electricity use of its data centers for the second year running.

In a blog post, Neha Palmer, Google’s director of operations, energy and location strategy, said the company first hit its renewable energy goal in 2017, thanks to its strategy of buying energy that’s sourced directly from solar power and wind farms.

“We’re the first organization of our size to achieve 100 percent renewable energy two years running, but just as important as reaching our goal is how we did it,” Palmer said.

Google’s most effective strategy in this regard is to sign Power Purchase Agreements with energy providers that build solar or wind farms nearby its data centers. Palmer said the advantage of PPAs is they help to spur the construction of these renewable energy projects in the first place.

“In 2018, our energy purchasing kept pace with our demand thanks to several PPA-driven projects — including three wind farms in Scandinavia, dozens of massive wind turbines in Oklahoma, and more than 120,000 solar panels in the Netherlands,” Palmer said.

But PPAs aren’t Google’s only strategy, since it’s not always possible to build solar or wind next to all of its data centers. For that reason, Google has also worked with energy companies to create programs to help businesses purchase renewable energy from other sources.

“We’re a customer for these programs, but we also see our work as opening pathways for other organizations,” Palmer explained. “By making it simple to choose renewable energy through utilities, we can enable more companies to play a role in fighting climate change.”

In addition, Google has partnered with several firms in the Netherlands to buy renewable energy as a consortium, helping smaller companies to band together and save costs with bigger contracts.

Google’s purchasing initiatives go hand in hand with its efforts to limit energy use as much as possible at its data center facilities. The company has made big efforts there too, using advances in artificial intelligence and chip design to make its data centers more energy efficient. For example, it provides machine learning technology to wind farm operators in the U.S. to make energy production more predictable.

“Our latest Environmental Report shows that computing using centralized cloud services is generally up to 85% more efficient than using on-premises servers, which is good news for our users and the planet,” Palmer said.

And now that Google has gotten a handle on its own energy use, it has decided to try to help make it easier for other businesses to purchase cheap, renewable power as well.

“Though clean energy now makes economic sense across much of the globe, it remains difficult for many companies to access,” Palmer said. “We’ve joined other major energy purchasers to launch the Renewable Energy Buyer’s Alliance, with the goal of catalyzing 60 gigawatts of new renewable purchases by 2025.”

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE that most people understand how much of an energy hog data centers can be, and that questions are starting to be asked of the carbon footprint of these facilities. As such, it’s no surprise that companies like Google are working towards energy sustainability, he said.

“Google has gotten ahead of the curve on this and deserves congratulations for matching its renewable energy goals,” Mueller said. “It’s remarkable that Google Cloud remains cost competitive, so there is little excuse for the competition not to double their efforts to achieve a better carbon footprint, as Google has shown that it can be done.”

And indeed, Google’s rivals have shown that they’re equally committed to getting a better handle on their energy use. Just last week, Microsoft Corp. announced plans to build what it says will be two of the “most sustainable” data centers ever. The data centers, which will be located in Sweden, will be powered completely from renewable energy sources, Microsoft said.

And Facebook Inc. has recently shifted its own focus to technologies that can help to reduce energy use in its own data centers. One example is its new StatePoint Liquid Cooling system, which works by creating cold water instead of cold air.

Image: Google