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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.
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.
How are they helping? They run a massive corporate spy network designed to shove ads at people. That wastes tens millions of dollars in electricity. So stupid.