Cloud sustainability
Operating the cleanest cloud in the industry
We've eliminated all of our carbon emissions since our founding in 1998, a first for any
company our size. We’ve matched 100% of our electricity consumption with renewable
energy purchases since 2017, which includes the electricity to power Google Cloud. And
we recently committed to fully decarbonize our electricity supply by 2030 and operate
on clean energy, every hour and in every region.
Benefits for customers
You have many things to consider in the cloud platform you choose—its price, security,
openness, and products. We believe you should consider the environment too. When you
choose Google Cloud, your digital footprint is offset with clean energy, making your
compute impact net zero.
Reduce compute emissions to zero
By moving compute from a self-managed data center or collocation facility to Google
Cloud, the net emissions directly associated with your company's compute and data
storage will be zero.
Launch a sustainable VM
Be productive and sustainable
Businesses that switched to Google Workspace products like Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, and Meet
have reported reductions in IT energy use and carbon emissions of 65% to 85%.
Responsible collaboration tools
Energy efficiency at high speed
Less energy-intensive learning
Machine learning workloads require complex computations which are typically energy
intensive. Google Cloud TPUs are designed with energy efficiency in mind,
specifically to accelerate deep learning workloads at higher teraflops per watt compared
to general purpose processors.
Try our AI Platform
More energy-efficient archives
For cold data that you need to retain long term, Google not only powers that storage
efficiently but efficiently serves that data at the speed of hot storage.
Create a carbon-neutral bucket
Why Google Cloud?
Our commitment
Google is committed to purchasing enough renewable energy to match
consumption for all of our operations globally. By 2030, we'll move beyond matching and
offsets to fully decarbonize our electricity supply, once and for all.
Read about our progress
Purchasing energy
At Google, we have a high bar for the type of renewable energy we buy
through power purchase agreements. We strive to buy renewable
energy from projects that are new to the grid, which will replace and reduce the amount
of non-renewable energy on that grid. In fact, Google is the largest corporate purchaser
of renewable energy in the world.
Learn more about how we make the grid greener
Committing to 24/7 carbon-free energy
In many data center regions today, renewable energy isn't consistently available 24
hours a day. To address this, we buy a surplus of renewable energy in regions or hours
when solar and wind power are abundant. On a global and annual basis, our renewable
energy purchases zero out the entire carbon footprint of our electricity use. But we are
committed to a future where each Google data center is always matched—around the
clock—with carbon-free power.
Learn more about how we'll achieve a decarbonized electricity supply by 2030
Efficient data centers
Google Cloud is built for efficiency. Most data centers use almost as much non-computing
or "overhead" energy (like cooling and power conversion) as they do to power their
servers. At Google, we've reduced this overhead to only 11%.
Learn how we do it
Smarter data centers
Google's machine learning enables the analysis of massive amounts of operational
data-center data to create actionable recommendations and automated controls and reduce
the amount of electricity required to cool our servers by 30%.
Read how we use ML in our data centers
Waste
92%
Waste diverted
18%
of servers remanufactured
Energy
50%
Less energy
1.11
PUE
Certifications
50001
ISO certification
Industry leadership
"We meet the challenges posed by climate change and the need for resource efficiency by working to empower everyone—businesses, governments, nonprofit organizations, communities, and individuals—to use Google technology to create a more sustainable world."
"With its positive approach to open source and its promise of 100% renewable energy for its data centers by the end of 2017, Google Cloud really aligned with our company ethics."
"Every company, in every geography, should have a viable, expedient, and cost-effective pathway to renewable energy that meets their unique customer needs."
Greenpeace report
The IT sector is a significant consumer of electricity and expected to grow
exponentially into the future. How much renewable energy your cloud provider purchases
depends on who you choose. Fortunately, Greenpeace benchmarks each cloud and gave
Google an A rating in 2016.