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Google Now Purchases More Renewable Energy Than It Consumes As a Company (theverge.com)
In a blog post today, Google announced that it now purchases more renewable energy than it consumers as a company. "Google began these efforts in 2017, with the goal of purchasing as much renewable energy as it uses across its 13 data centers and all of its office complexes," reports The Verge. From the report: To be clear, Google is not powering all of its energy consumption with renewable energy. It's matching what it consumes with equal amounts of purchased renewable energy. For every kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed, it buys a kilowatt-hour from a wind or solar farm built specifically for Google. The company says that its total purchase of energy from sources like wind and solar now exceeds the amount of electricity used by its operations. Google says it currently has contracts to purchase three gigawatts of output from renewable energy projects, and while it says "it's not yet possible to 'power' a company of our scale by 100 percent renewable energy," these purchases do have a positive impact. Google says it's helping spur development of clean energy projects, encouraging other companies to follow suit.
"now purchases more renewable energy than it consumers as a company."
They consumer us all, allright.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
If they purchase more energy than they consume then what are they doing with the extra energy?
most corporate pronouncements are just that
Might Google become a major utility company?
They've intervened in markets with Project Fi and Google Fiber. With economies of scale, why not become an energy retailer?
Good for them. It is refreshing to see a company helping out the rock we all live on. We may have our beefs regarding other business practices, but this is one we should all appreciate.
I can't imagine them screwing this up, although knowing Google, like many projects they'll abandon it. So perhaps this policy will be abandoned for the sake of it in the next few years like everything else?
It uses less power than it consumes? This makes no sense. It doesn't power everything with renewable energy but buys more renewable energy than it uses. It buys renewable energy but doesn't use it all? What the hell happens to the energy it buys but doesn't use?
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
This is a an accounting game. If google actually used 100% renewable electricity, they would say it plainly rather than make specious claims about paper purchases. In reality, they need reliable power around the clock, even when the sun isn't visible and the wind isn't just right. The electricity they use comes from the grid, from the same dirty mix of sources, and includes a token amount a wind and solar. Or in more sensible places, a substantial amount of clean nuclear.
They even admit: "it's not yet possible to 'power' a company of our scale by 100 percent renewable energy", so their propaganda reduces to "a positive impact". The real numbers are too ugly to even voice, and the economics don't make any sense.
Unless the plants generating that renewable energy were built specifically to provide power for Google (i.e. they wouldn't have been built if not for Google), then all this will have had zero effect on the amount of renewable energy being used. All Google will have done is purchased renewable energy which someone else was going to purchase anyway, and driven those people to purchase non-renewable energy instead.
The way to change the makeup of energy which is consumed is to build renewable capacity. If you change consumption without changing capacity, all you do when you buy renewable energy is force others to buy exactly as much non-renewable energy as you bought renewable. Person A used to buy non-renewable energy (or didn't use energy) while person B bought renewable. But now Person A buys the renewable energy, forcing person B to buy non-renewable. The total amount of renewable energy generated doesn't change when you change consumption or allocation. It only changes when you change capacity.
So they're spending money on "clean" power they don't actually use (and apparently nobody actually uses) to somehow atone for "dirty" power they actually do use (and apparently also pay for). Who says environmentalism isn't a religion?
you don't need to just consider climate change there is a very real benefit to lowering air pollution. ,
Of course the whole thing here is the EPA does not actually have the legal authority to create laws so much of what Obama did was pissing in the wind and ends up overturned in court.
Google does not care about climate change but they set themselves a goal as a marketing effort. to be 100% clean energy. (remember there is a dirty side to clean energy which is the making and disposing of the PV panels etc. but it is not a zero environmental impact equation.) They obviously found that it was too expensive and so they just fudged the numbers and ran the marketing machine, which is what this is. When they buy the clean energy that they do not consumer what do they do with it? the answer of course is sell it (possibly at a loss) but it is a bit of a game as if you buy clean energy has that had an economic or environmental impact? The whole thing is just a game as if you buy carbon credits you are just playing a bad game to put money in the pockets of criminals and conmen . This already happened with cheap carbon credits produced by Russia just by lying.
You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
We are spiralling down mining math now :)
They buy more than they use. And what do they do with the excess???? Is this title just plan Generation-X or is the Slashdot'r who posted this learning English?
If it purchases more than it uses, how does it store or waste the excess?
The way this works is that Google buys 120% of the power it needs from these renewable producers. It pays the grid operator to deliver 120% of its power requirement to its various data centers. It pays the grid to deliver the whole 120%. If Google only uses 100% of the power it is paying to have delivered, there is an additional 20% of power being fed into the grid. More likely, the renewable plants are delivering 200% or more of Google's instantaneous usage during the sunlight hours and that excess power get delivered to other consumers.
The grid doesn't care where power comes from after it is on the grid. It only knows how much power that is being put on the grid cost. If it gets a free 20% of Googles' power plus the transport fee from Google for that extra 20%,that is pure profit. At any given instance the grid looks at all power sources to determine where it can get the cheapest power to meet its anticipated demand. During the time the renewable plants are producing, the grid uses that power and tell the other sources to pound sand. The grid doesn't care if power is renewable or not. It only cares how much money it can make at any given instance. If it has more power sources than it needs, it can refuse power from peaker plants and they will reduce the amount of power that they produce. These plants are usually gas fired steam plants that can easily be dialed back, These peaker plants will probably become battery storage plants in the future when there are more renewable sources available than the total required peak load. In the end, the total amount of renewable energy gets consumed by somebody.
The grid operator loves it since they are essentially "buying" electricity for a negative price. When the sun goes down or the wind stops, the renewable plant stops putting energy on the grid and the grid has to start paying the carbon based peaker plants to make energy again. Maybe, at some point in the future, it will be able to draw down the battery storage before using the peaker plants. This works out great for the grid operators since their is much higher demand during the day than at night. The two big losers here are the non-renewable fuel suppliers since they aren't running the peaker plants as much and Google since they are overpaying for a specific amount of renewable power source to be generated and transported. The renewable producers are not likely to have many companies like Google to buy their power at a premium. Most companies will buy what is cheapest so the renewable operators will have to compete on price with the fossil producers.
Is it used by others? It would be logical not to waste it, so it should be sold to others. The article sounds though as if this is not relevant to them. It sounds as if they just want to drive renewable energy.
Do they even have a reduction of conventional energy production in mind? Nothing is mentioned in that way.
Even if they stop, that capacity has been built and will continue providing cheap electricity for decades to come.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It is well-known that wind turbines directly impact birds and bats, yet so many people continue to tout wind as a "green" or "clean" energy source that protects the environment.
Except it's killing animals that are supposed to be a part of this "green" environment.
Renewables are generally not constant energy. They have huge peaks and dips. Take solar for example. It peaks at a certain point of the day and dips heavily as the day progresses. So when you see headlines like "140% renewable energy" they are not compensating for the dips but merely taking the peak as if it was a constant. That 40% is needed in non-peak hours. And it is often not enough to 100% coverage of a complete day of energy needs.
I can't imagine them screwing this up, although knowing Google, like many projects they'll abandon it. So perhaps this policy will be abandoned for the sake of it in the next few years like everything else?
Google has been working on this project for a decade, so it seems like something with long-term commitment.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Google markets their new batteries charged by renewable energy. Brightly colored, and surprisingly affordable, these batteries sport wire-less connectivity. In order to pay for the development and manufacturing, consumers using these batteries will have to endure a short ad playing just before the device it's powering can operate.
To be clear, Google is not powering all of its energy consumption with renewable energy. It's matching what it consumes with equal amounts of purchased renewable energy. For every kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed, it buys a kilowatt-hour from a wind or solar farm built specifically for Google.
What?! "To be clear" my ass. After reading this half a dozen times, I still don't understand what they mean. What's clear is that they are buying renewable energy, but not using it. Where does it go? How can you buy energy, but not use it? You can't just dump it, or recycle it.
Are they paying the power company, but not consuming any of it? But that's not "buying energy", that's just paying someone to do nothing. Can I get that money then? I promise to produce the required energy in a renewable way, by using this perpetual motion device I invented. Yeah, the energy is definitely being produced, but you don't need any of it, so it just stays within the device.
Or are they giving the energy away after they buy it? Where can I get that free Google energy then?!
Nah, that's not how it works.
Goggle just grounds out the extra power through massive resistors. *This* is what's causing global warming! :)
hawk
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I'm Google. I have facilities all over the globe but for this example let's consider just two. A facility in City A where dirty electricity costs me $1/kWhr, and a facility in City B where dirty electricity costs me $2/kWhr. Rather than going through the painful exercise of figuring out how to get green electricity to my facilities, or trying to trade carbon offsets across different markets, I find a proposed solar farm project in City C and help get it off the ground by agreeing to buy all its electricity at $1.50/kWhr for 3 years. I turn around and resell that electricity in its local market and for the sake of this exercise let's assume I break even (for Google, any profit or loss here is negligible). If I invest in enough such projects I'm eventually buying as much renewable electricity as my facilities consume, in effect "green-washing" my consumption and giving renewable projects the jump-start they need. After a few more years of this I'll know everything I need to build my own renewable projects right next to my facilities to power them directly and cut out the dirty electricity completely.