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SIRIM - Technology Provider
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ENERGY<br />
offices worldwide. Most of the on-campus<br />
green initiatives were started by<br />
Googlers, <strong>and</strong> have now grown into company-wide<br />
efforts. From the solar panels<br />
on their roofs to their bike-to-work programme,<br />
these initiatives eliminate the<br />
equivalent of more than 21,500 metric<br />
tons of CO2 per year.<br />
Carbon offsets: getting to zero<br />
Even after efforts in efficiency <strong>and</strong><br />
renewable energy, Google still impacts<br />
the environment. To eliminate impacts<br />
on climate change, they have invested in<br />
projects that reduces carbon emissions<br />
at another source outside of Google <strong>and</strong><br />
can be very picky as they want to make<br />
sure that investments that have been<br />
made have a positive impact <strong>and</strong> that it<br />
wouldn’t have happened without them.<br />
For example, Google pays for reductions<br />
in emissions from a l<strong>and</strong>fill near their<br />
data centre. By investing in these projects,<br />
the total climate impact ends up<br />
being zero. This means that all products<br />
<strong>and</strong> services from them are carbon<br />
neutral.<br />
Their footprint: beyond zero<br />
Efforts in efficiency, buying clean<br />
energy <strong>and</strong> purchasing carbon offsets<br />
bring the carbon footprint down<br />
to zero. Google is going beyond carbon<br />
neutral by committing over $1 billion<br />
to renewable energy projects that<br />
create far more renewable energy for<br />
the world than they have consumed as<br />
a company. In addition, Google’s products<br />
have enabled users to save energy<br />
themselves.<br />
Renewable energy for everyone<br />
else<br />
In addition to investing in renewable<br />
energy for Google’s own operations, they<br />
have also been investing in renewable<br />
power projects to grow the industry as<br />
a whole. They have specifically committed<br />
over $1 billion to renewable energy<br />
projects such as large-scale wind <strong>and</strong><br />
rooftop solar <strong>and</strong> when added up, these<br />
projects represent a total capacity of over<br />
2 GW, which is far more electricity than<br />
is used. To put this in context, this electricity<br />
is equivalent to that consumed by<br />
more than 500,000 homes.<br />
You can save energy too<br />
Google products provide over 100 billion<br />
searches every month, map information<br />
for over 1 billion monthly users, <strong>and</strong> host<br />
over 5 million businesses in the cloud.<br />
In addition to being carbon neutral,<br />
Google’s products can help you reduce<br />
your impact on the environment.<br />
green+.2014, november-december 61
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