Google's lifetime net carbon footprint now zero, says Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai said that Google has eliminated its entire carbon legacy -- covering all its operational emissions before it became carbon neutral in 2007 -- through the purchase of carbon offsets

Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday declared that the company has eliminated its entire carbon legacy -- covering all its operational emissions before it became carbon neutral in 2007 -- through the purchase of high-quality carbon offsets. It means that Google's lifetime net carbon footprint is now zero.

"We're pleased to be the first major company to get this done, today," Pichai said in a blog post.

The company now aims to only use carbon-free energy to run its data centers, campuses and businesses worldwide at all times by 2030.

Google was the first major company to become carbon neutral in 2007.

"We were the first major company to match our energy use with 100 per cent renewable energy in 2017. We operate the cleanest global cloud in the industry, and we're the world's largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy," Pichai informed.

"We estimate that the commitments we're making today will directly generate more than 20,000 new jobs in clean energy and associated industries, in America and around the world, by 2025".

Pichai said the company is working on ways to apply artificial intelligence (AI) to optimise its electricity demand and forecasting. These efforts will help create 12,000 jobs by 2025.

"We'll enable 5 GW of new carbon-free energy across our key manufacturing regions by 2030 through investment. We expect this to spur more than $5 billion in clean energy investments, avoid the amount of emissions equal to taking more than 1 million cars off the road each year, and create more than 8,000 clean energy jobs," the Google CEO explained.

Google Environmental Insights Explorer currently helps more than 100 cities to track and reduce their building and transportation carbon emissions and maximize their renewable energy use.

Pichai said the company will expand the tool to 3,000 cities worldwide.

"We're also committing to help more than 500 cities and local governments globally reduce a total of 1 gigaton of carbon emissions annually by 2030 - that's the equivalent of the annual carbon emissions of a country the size of Japan".

Pichai said the goal is to find new ways that Google products can help one billion people make more sustainable choices by 2022.

--IANS

na/