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Laying the Foundation for Renewable Energy Certification Programs in Asia
4/6/16
At Google, we’ve made a
long term commitment
to power 100% of our operations with renewable energy. To that end, we’ve
purchased more than 2 gigawatts of renewable energy
to date, making us the world’s largest non-utility purchaser of renewables.
Our
data centers
– including our facilities in
Taiwan
and
Singapore
that help us provide people in Asia with faster, more reliable access to our tools and services – make up the majority of our electricity consumption. We are
working to power all of our data centers around the world with renewable energy
, but one of the challenges we face in Asia is that effective renewable energy certification programs simply aren’t available.
To help address this, we’re announcing today that we’re providing seed funding to the
Center for Resource Solutions
(CRS) to begin laying the groundwork to establish such programs across Asia, starting in Taiwan. They have over 20 years of experience developing and operating renewable energy certification programs.
These kinds of programs are key in helping companies like Google actually know that the power we are buying comes from a renewable source. They work by “tagging” each MWh of energy generated from a source like wind or solar as renewable, which creates a renewable energy certificate (“REC”). This is especially important to us in Taiwan, where we are actively looking to purchase renewable energy for our data center.
The
video below
from CRS explains how this works for some customers. In Google’s case, we buy both the physical power and the RECs associated with that power, providing us with both the financial benefits of renewable energy and the assurance that the electricity we are buying is in fact renewable.
It may not sound like much, but these programs are critical to creating well-functioning voluntary renewable energy markets. For the
dozens of Fortune 100 and Global 100 companies that have renewable energy commitments
, RECs are a critical instrument to ensuring that renewable energy purchasing claims are accurate and verifiable. They have played a key role in enabling companies in the United States to grow their renewable energy purchasing from about 100 MW in 2012 to over
3,000 MW last year
.
With this support from Google, CRS will begin examining how best to structure these programs across Asia to create robust voluntary renewable energy markets. They will also begin building a coalition of international stakeholders from the public, private, and NGO sectors to drive these efforts forward.
Organizations interested in supporting these efforts may get
more information here.
Posted by Marsden Hanna, Global Energy Policy and Strategy
Google unites with other tech companies to support US Clean Power Plan.
4/1/16
Today Google, along with Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, filed a legal brief with the DC Circuit Court supporting the
Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan.
The CPP aims to accelerate the transition to cleaner sources of electricity and puts an emphasis on renewable energy development and energy efficiency. The plan has been put on hold pending the outcome of a legal challenge.
Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have come together in
this brief
to offer our unique view as large consumers of energy. Collectively we used 10 million MWh of electricity last year, including at 50 data centers in 12 states. That means reliable and affordable electricity is integral to the continued growth and operation of all of our businesses and the services we offer to our users everywhere. We are all committed to sourcing our power in a sustainable way, and renewable energy makes good business sense for us all.
At Google, we have been
carbon neutral since 2007
. We have signed contracts to
purchase over 2GW of renewable energy
-- equivalent to taking nearly one million cars off the road -- making us the largest non-utility renewable energy purchaser in the world. Just last year we signed the
largest and most diverse purchase of renewable energy
made by a non-utility company to power our data centers. The deal covers a series of new wind and solar projects around the world and takes us one step closer to our goal of powering 100% of our operations with clean energy. Above and beyond our own power purchases, we have also invested
more than $2.5 billion in 22 other renewable projects
around the world.
These efforts underline the seriousness of our
commitment to renewables
and we believe the CPP is an important step in the transition to a cleaner energy future. The message from our companies today is clear -- we can meet the world’s future energy challenges in a way that drives innovation and growth while tackling climate change.
Posted by Michael Terrell, Principal, Energy and Global Infrastructure.
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